


Mai Soli, Sempre Soli

by shamefulshameless



Category: Sense8 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Cluster Feels, F/M, Psychological Torture, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2018-11-09 16:47:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 23,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11108703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shamefulshameless/pseuds/shamefulshameless
Summary: He knows they're coming for him. But until they do, he has two goals: keep them safe, and survive.Set after Whispers discovers Kala, but before the rescue mission starts.





	1. Chapter 1

" _You have something good... and beautiful... hidden inside of you."_

_Dark hair, wild and black against the white afternoon. Smiling from above as she threw handful after handful of snow at him beneath her. She was giggling._

_"Just as I have something dark and wicked inside of me."_

_Her eyes, blacker than usual, as she thrust the bomb into his hand. Knowing it would kill. Wanting it to._

_Her entire being flashed before his eyes in rapid succession. He felt himself sinking into the man she turned him into. This version of himself that was not a monster, like all the other versions were. This Wolfgang Bogdanow was who he had always wanted to become, but never knew he could, until her._

_He was light and unbruised, for a moment. But the moment passed._

Wolfgang's eyes snapped open. A bright light directly above him forced them back to a squint. He remembered where he was now. He was in the middle of his worst nightmare.

"Hello again, Mr. Bogdanow," cooed a voice from behind him as Whispers emerged from his periphery. "Here I was worried you'd never come back to us."

Wolfgang had long since stopped speaking, but words weren't needed for this. He cursed himself again for not leaving Berlin earlier, as if that would have mattered. As if Lila wouldn't have followed him, as if Kala would-

No.  
He knew as soon as her face crossed his mind that Whispers had seen it, too- again.

He screwed his eyes shut and knew that made no difference either.

The gears in Whispers' head were turning, and he braced himself. "I have been thinking. When you were brought to our attention, Wolfgang, I admit I carried some incorrect assumptions about you," Whispers mused. He was enjoying this; he chewed every word like candy. "The Bogdanow name is not unknown to this organization; Yours particularly holds weight in the more unsavory areas of your city. And yet I both over- and underestimated you. This was a mistake on my part. I saw your resilience coming, and I must be frank, I'd prefer someone like Miss Gunnarsdottír to be laying here with me. Such a clear soft spot there. As you've learned since coming here, pain is the easiest route into the mind. Well, I'm sure you knew that before, didn't you? You have caused so much pain, Wolfgang."

He shook his head in mock sorrow. "It is a shame, a _shame_ that you were born into this cluster. If you weren't, you would be an ideal collaborator. Believe it or not, not many of our kind are willing to kill. But not you." He spoke as if mulling over a complicated idea, almost to himself. If he hadn't known better, Wolfgang would think that he was slipping up. Monologues are the downfall of every villain, Capheus had said once.

He stopped any thought of Capheus cold. He would not be giving up another one. He prayed Whispers hadn't been paying close enough attention to register the scent of smokey streets, the sound of car horns, or a glimpse of a hopeful smile.

He hadn't. Whispers was leading up to something else entirely. A quick glance into his head and Wolfgang knew what it was. Of course.

"But I never thought that you could be one of _those_. I thought you were far too smart for that. _Those_ kinds of sensorium- your kind, I suppose- tend to be the weakest. To fall in love with a clustermate is privy to only a certain type of sensate. I truly had thought you to be a tad stronger than that. And a tad less selfish. Especially now that we've learned more about Mrs. Rasal."

Wolfgang's blood was ice. He felt her in the back of his head- she wasn't on blockers yet. He felt her move closer, expand in his mind. He blocked her out. She wasn't coming in here, not now.

Whispers continued. "A married woman, of course- not the first time you've turned a good man into a cuckold, I'm sure. And Rajan Rasal _is_ a good man. His company helps many people," he paused, and took a deep breath. "Wolfgang, you agree with me, don't you? You think she would be better off without you. Now it seems I've proved you right." He stopped and chuckled at his own joke, and Wolfgang imagined pulling all his teeth out with a pair of pliers. A comforting thought.

Whispers leaned in closer. "I think you want to know why I'm here. You want to know why I haven't been using my toys to draw your cluster out. You think I'm wasting my time... monologue-ing." Fuck. He had heard. All he could hope now is that Whispers hadn't seen any more of the truly good man behind those words.

Wolfgang spoke, his voice thick with disuse. "Hmm. If you're going to torture me, do it. I was sleeping."

"Terribly sorry to have woken you. I just thought it prudent to tell you that every moment you resist is wasted," his timbre had changed. He was using the tone Wolfgang had heard through Will's memories many times. Whispers wasn't speaking at all- he was hissing. "I am a part of you now. I understand how it feels to be an individualist thrust into the world of sensorium. I've seen you. Your past. Your friend, who would die for you. Your father. Your poor, poor mother, too beautiful to die so young. Your family let you down, so you did what you felt you had to. I know all of this. Just like I know how it feels to look at her. I know what it's like, watching her marry another man. It hurts. I know how it feels to touch her face and hold her and kiss her because as much as you try to pretend, Wolfgang, _I am you_. Just as I know that right now you are the angriest you have ever been in your life."

He was right.

"Whether you like it or not, your cluster is mine. Why put yourself through more of this...? Tell me where Will Gorski is and we will work something out."

Just as Kala had before, he felt Will's presence in his subconscious start to grow. Wolfgang knew what Will was about to do. _Will, no!_ he thought frantically. But for once, Will didn't listen to him.

Wolfgang still felt the straps constricting his wrists and ankles. He still felt the ache in his chest from the paddles, and the thrumming of the Traceworks boring into his head. But he wasn't in control of his body anymore. No. Laying on this table was Will.

 _What the fuck are you doing here?_ Wolfgang yelled silently.

 _You've been here too long._ Will's even voice was a comfort, even if what he was doing was fucking stupid. _Let me do this_ _, just for a minute. I know how to handle him. You're not in a position to still be refusing help._

Wolfgang acquiesced, and settled as Will turned his own eyes sharply to Whispers. Whispers smiled. "I understand I'm speaking to Officer Gorski."

"Here I am, Milt. Been a while." Will's casual way of speaking sounded foreign in Wolfgang's voice. "Having some trouble with my friend here...? Yeah, I'll bet, he's fuckin' teflon. You're right, you probably would've had an easier time with any other one of us. Tough luck."

"Will, I am offering you a deal. If you surrender yourself to me, I will release Mr. Bogdanow without a word. If you do not, you will continue to feel his agony until every last one of you is... eradicated. Starting with Miss Gunnarsdottír and Mrs. Rasal."

Wolfgang felt a distinctly American chortle escape his own lips. "You really think we're that dumb, don't you?"

"You've run out of options, Officer. I'll be seeing you soon no matter what."

"I'm looking forward to it." Before Will left, he made sure to leave Wolfgang one, rushed thought. More of a feeling. _We're coming for you._

Wolfgang felt his absence. It was cold and dreary- and he and Whispers were alone yet again.

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

How much time had passed? He had no way of knowing. Even if the room had windows, he wouldn't be able to think clearly enough to make sense of the changing light. It hurt too badly. All of it, everything. Wolfgang thought that he'd experienced the very limits of pain before he'd been dragged here (he would never admit it, but he took some pride in that). He'd been on the receiving end of beatings, chokeholds, knives, and even a bullet or two. Pain so horrific that his vision went white.

And that was just _his_ pain. He knew the pain of others now, too. He'd felt it all. A kick in the gut by an underground kickboxer that knocked him (her) to the ground. The sun-warmed metal of the side of a bus as a frame weaker than his own was slammed against it. The sting of a hypodermic needle once a month, like he'd sat on a nail. A boot to the chin from a tattooed man with a wicked sneer. Bruised knees after dropping too fast to help the bleeding man at the bottom of the staircase, whose assailants had been too quick to stop. A hollow ache throughout his entire body that accompanied heroin withdrawal.

And, of course, worst of all- the memory of contraction after contraction, of limbs smashing against all sides of the car as it barreled down the mountain, the agony of childbirth, breaking through glass using nothing but small fists and adrenaline. Cold, ripping through his body and warning to seize him up for good. The pain of watching her die. Her daughter, his daughter, their daughter. He understood that he'd had no idea what pain was. How could he have?

And then there was now. It wasn't just the paddles, although those brought the kind of agony that would send most men into madness. It was the thing digging into his head, making it all multiply eightfold. He felt the electricity surging through his own body, and then through seven more, and then back again. He felt their anguish, their worry. Why weren't they on blockers yet? She'd figured out how to make them weeks earlier. Why are they putting themselves through all of this for him? He wasn't worth it, as he'd figured out years ago.

He was alone for now. Whispers had abandoned another effort a few hours ago. He'd be back soon. For now, Wolfgang was trapped in a half-conscious daze. More likely he was in shock from the pain. He needed to focus on something. His consciousness started lilting towards a fixed point. He should've expected this eventually.

Wolfgang willed his eyes open, and there she was. Standing over him was Kala, and the look in her eyes was enough to break his heart a thousand times. He stared, wanting to warn her away from his head, where Whispers could invade any moment. But he couldn't bring himself to. All he wanted was for her to stay.

He hadn't seen himself in days but he knew the feeling of blood drying, and that feeling was pretty much everywhere. So of course his swollen, sweaty form was hard for her to look at; if their roles were reversed he'd be absolutely feral. Fuck, he didn't want to think about that. That would be the only thing more painful than her eyes right now.

Kala brought a hand to his cheek that forced his eyes closed again. "Wolfgang," she spoke softly. "We'll be here soon, I promise."

_Don't. I won't risk all of you-_

"Don't do that," she scolded. He almost wanted to smile- she was scolding him even now. "I know you don't want help, but this isn't a gunfight at a restaurant. This is more important than that- if you stay here, we are all in more danger than if we wait for you to escape yourself. I don't think you'd be able to anyhow." He smirked reflexively, and heard her let out a shaky breath. The current equivalent of a laugh.

"Will has a plan. I can't tell you what it is, but know that we're doing all we can. We are coming for you." The sound of boots echoed behind the door. Her head jerked up at the sound, then back at him. "Goodbye," she said frantically, and vanished.

The footsteps passed. Great. So she didn't have to leave, after all. This was probably for the best, he reminded himself. But now there was nothing to distract him from the throbbing ache he felt in every cell of his body. His mind drifted again to the mountains, and the sight of Magnus' brains splayed out on the roof of the car. Wolfgang needed to think about something else as he finally fell into a fitful sleep.

_The first time he'd experienced the day in the mountains was in a dream, and he'd woken up to stare at his dirty ceiling for what felt like hours. Silent. He remembered that morning well. He'd glared up at the dust mites in the air as if he was going to kill them all himself, one by one. He'd done this until he felt the empty space on the mattress dip beside him._

_He hadn't needed to glance over to see who it was. "You saw all of it," Riley had whispered. "I'm sorry you had to see that."_

_His jaw clenched. "I'm sorry it had to happen."_

_She was sitting cross legged on his bed, staring at her hands folded in her lap. "It's not easy to remember. I think you know that now."_

_He nodded. "Will's sleeping?"_

_"Yes."_

_"Want a cigarette?"_

_Riley smiled that sad smile at him, that smile that made the Will in him melt. "Sure. I haven't been able to smoke a lot lately."_

_"I know." He reached over to the pack on his bedside table and passed her the last one, and a lighter. Riley took a long drag (Wolfgang felt the smoke fill his own lungs). They sat in silence until the cigarette was finished. Wolfgang had taken it and rubbed it out on the bedside table before laying back down._

_"You can just- lay here if you want," he offered. He'd never been the one they went to for comfort, and he'd always liked it better that way. But this was different. Riley took the spot on the bed next to him, and he felt her cool hand slide into his. She moved slowly closer until Wolfgang could feel the tickle of her sweater on his bare shoulder, and they'd lain side by side like that for probably an hour, maybe more. And together, they had stared at the ceiling._

Wolfgang surfaced from the memory to find himself back on the slab. Suddenly, Riley's voice was in his head. _Stay strong, okay? You've lived through worse without us._

The door swung open. The three walking HAZMAT suits were back, meaning that he wouldn't be far behind.

He wasn't. "Ah, Wolfgang," Whispers began his dance. "Today will be a new day. I have hope, at least. Don't you?"

Wolfgang clung to the thought that had been getting him through these encounters: picturing himself killing Whispers in the most slow and painful way possible. Before he could steel himself, though, one of the nurses shoved the syringe into the side of his neck, full of the unknown substance that sent fire into his veins. He heard the word that had begun to haunt his seven other selves in their dreams.

"Paddles."

He had stopped trying not to scream, it was a useless effort anyhow. His body thrashed against his restraints and he felt his cluster collapse as one.

Abruptly, he realized that he had no choice anymore. He needed them, he needed them now.

He felt like an exposed nerve after the paddles, but he willed himself to Capheus anyway. He was sitting with his mother, concerned with her son's state. She was asking him nervously what was wrong, her voice full of worry as she clutched his hand. Wolfgang stood for a moment, panting, before Capheus looked up at him. He couldn't find the strength to speak, but he didn't need to.

A blink, and he found himself staring at the back of his brother. Lito, hunched over the sink. They'd always shared a special connection. Lito loved him, he knew. Wolfgang knew, too, that Lito's frantic grab for painkillers was not only for himself. Lito swallowed the pills and looked up at the mirror, only then noticing the horror show behind him. Wolfgang didn't register what he looked like, but Lito did. Lito thought with a shattered heart that Wolfgang looked like a slaughtered pig, red and suffocated and bloody. Or like Anton, if it weren't for the eyes, which were wide with desperation. A look he'd never seen from Wolfgang before. No one had.

They stood that way, communicating wordlessly. If only he hadn't gotten caught up in the moment, he would've noticed a new visitor. His head lolled to the side on the headrest. A manicured hand was placed neatly next to his head. He looked up at her through bleary eyes.

"Regrets? They will come."

Wolfgang didn't have the energy to hate her. He didn't have the life force to do anything but stare at the paddles as they descended on his chest yet again.

He had to get out of here. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you thought the flashback was out of place, sorry - it's #RileyAppreciationDay and the girl needs some love


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here comes canon divergence!

Most of them were still flying. They had been for a long while. Lito was trying to answer Hernando and Dani's rushed questions as simply and quietly as he could, but his words kept jumbling in his anxiety and they remained as confused as ever.

Amanita was sleeping with her head rested on Nomi's shoulder. Wolfgang felt the ghost of the back of Amanita's hand as Nomi stroked her thumb over it. Back and forth. Back and forth. He focused on the sensation for a moment. It was soothing, sort of.

Capheus' flight was turbulent, in more ways than one. Wolfgang could feel how conflicted he was- yes, he was terrified, and determined and grim. But he was excited to be on a plane... and feeling bad about being excited. Yet that didn't stop him from pressing his hand to the window and letting the hum of the sky fill him with light.

Sun flinched as a flight attendant rested her hand on her shoulder for a moment. She was nervous. This was not an emotion Wolfgang often felt emanating from Sun, but then again, the circumstances of the last few days haven't been exactly predictable. He felt how her desire to help him outweighed her paranoia at being caught, and out of habit he found himself lamenting. She shouldn't have come, he was a waste of time, he wasn't worth it, she should save herself, forget about him, get on the next plane back-

"Stop," she whispered. The airplane snapped into clear focus as Wolfgang switched from sensing what she sensed to visiting her directly. She was wearing huge fake glasses that would have made him smile on any other day. "Thinking that way is a waste of your energy," she continued. Wolfgang stood in the aisle, supporting his weak body on the top of her chair.

Sun didn't look up at him, but kept her eyes focused on a newspaper in her lap. Talking to herself openly would lead people to pay attention to her- only increasing the risk of being discovered. "How many times have I heard those words pass from your head into mine... your solution is always self-sacrifice. This is the easiest way to lose a fight."

"You said it," he mustered, "you can't win a fight protecting yourself."

"Protecting. Not sacrificing. If you continue to believe you are less important than any one of us, then very soon you will be." She took a risk and looked up at him. Her eyes widened at the sight of the blood caked in his hair and beard. The coating of sweat that, had he actually been standing on this plane, could very well be fucking pooling around his feet. Sun softened. "Be strong. Do not stop fighting."

Wolfgang collapsed back into his own mind. Here he was, back on the table. Sun stood over him. "You have no way of knowing when he will be back. Use this time wisely. What in this room could you use to your advantage?"

He and Sun didn't interact often. They didn't need to. They had an understanding: they were made of the same thing. Therefore, when they found themselves together, they settled into a comfortable reticence. Sometimes they would stand side by side in complete and utter silence before one of them would simply vanish. Neither of them felt pressured to provide insight or assistance, like they felt was their duty to provide to the rest of the cluster. It was a moment like this that occurred now, in this dark and cold room. Wolfgang's head was restrained, but he was just able to crane his neck around enough to get a blurry picture.

A few feet to the right of his knees sat a tray of torture devices. That could definitely be useful if he had any way at all of getting to them. Shit, why would they even have that if all they were going to use were the paddles? The answer came to him in Lito's voice: _intimidation_. Just behind him were monitors with countless tubes and wires leading to various parts of his body, covered in flashing lights and numbers he would never be able to comprehend.

Wolfgang glanced back to where Sun had stood, and instead was faced with Kala. His breath hitched. Her gaze was fixed not on his sorry state, but on the monitors behind him. She skimmed over each one, ghosting her index finger just above the dials, the way she did when she was trying to work out a complicated problem. "It doesn't look like they're monitoring anything too out of the ordinary." Her throat was clogged- she was trying not to cry. "All of this is essentially to make sure you stay alive... except for this one." She squinted her eyes at a display to his left, whose cords led directly to the Traceworks. "I assume this one traces the psycellium."

"Is there a way we could disable it?" A new presence. Nomi.

Without looking up, Kala replied, "Not unless we can get his hands free."

"These aren't the kind I can pick," Will shook his head as he appeared and approached Wolfgang's wrists. "Whispers probably planned on that. Even if I could, there are cameras in here- they'd come in and sedate him before we could make anything happen."

He turned to Wolfgang. "I think your only choice is to wait. I know you wanna do more, but you have to leave this one to us. It's what I told you earlier, alright? They're fucking unlucky that they got you."

Boots in the hall. His cluster all snapped their heads up at the noise, like Kala had done before. Sun was back; she kneeled down and muttered in his ear. "This is a safe. What do you do? Listen to the tumblers. Open the hatch. Collect your prize. Escape."

The door swung open before he could work through what she meant. The HAZMATs came in, but made no move for the paddles. Whispers was nowhere to be seen. Something was different here. Sun's words found a home, finally.

What do you do? Listen to the tumblers.

These people, they were the tumblers. The cogs just below the surface, but not quite inside the system. Wolfgang screwed his eyes shut and listened to these men, these tumblers. They were speaking in hushed voices. British accents, but that wasn't surprising. He could only make out a few words.

Wheel. Later. Listen. Upset.

He heard another word, too, and paused. He had heard it clearly. He had. But he had no idea what it meant. It was an English word, definitely. How had his English failed him- he had two born and raised Americans floating around in his head. Wolfgang reached out to Will, and was met with radio silence. Nomi was completely absent, too.

His entire cluster was gone. They must have met up and taken Kala's blockers together. How had he missed that shared sensation, of them meeting for the first time? Had he been too focused on the cronies? Had it been that long? Why hadn't anyone come to warn him of their impending absence?

Either way, he was completely alone.

The snatches of English he'd heard had been translated through his own knowledge. He'd been in English class all through school, and right now he was regretting how often he and Felix had skipped out to watch films. "Why should we have to learn English?" Felix would snort. "It's not like the assholes in America are learning German, you know?"

Felix's mother caught them skipping once and chastised them, telling them they would come to wish they'd never missed out on the knowledge they could be learning in school. If she could see him now.

Now, all he had was Wheel, Later, Listen, Upset, and seven empty holes in his head where his cluster should be.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't forget to keep fighting for Sense8!  
> Also- vote for Sense8 to win best drama series here:
> 
> http://m.eonline.com/news/860406/tv-scoop-awards-vote-for-the-best-drama-and-best-comedy-now


	4. Chapter 4

Wolfgang had been alone for at least two days, he'd wager. No one, not even a nurse to change his sweaty clothes, had entered his little hellhole. He'd been left here seemingly to rot, parched and starving and sticky. This was more than suspect to him- it had to be a bad sign. They must have found the cluster.

No, no. They hadn't. They were on blockers, but he would know if they were dead. Wolfgang was sure that would overpower any manmade pill.

Still, it was an unpleasant sensation: for the first time in over a year, there were no voices in his head. He had forgotten what that was like, to be the sole occupant of his own mind. As frustrating as the connection could be, he felt like a fraction of himself without it. He occupied the empty space with his new mantra, which he repeated to himself constantly, until it sounded like a prayer.

Wheel. Later. Listen. Upset.

Will had told him that his only option was to wait, yes. But Wolfgang had been waiting, and here he was, in a now-abandoned room, laying in his own piss. He wouldn't waste away in here. He hadn't survived his whole life to die that way.

If no one came for him, maybe he would starve until he was thin enough to slip out of his restraints? That sounded fucking brutal, he was going to have to think of a better plan than that.

He knew that the plan, if there was to be one, lay somewhere in Wheel, Later, Listen, Upset. They were clues, even as minuscule as they were. He'd broken in and out of places with less. But most of his heists back home didn't involve torture chambers.

He ran it over again. Wheel. Wolfgang knew that the table he laid on was on wheels, he'd felt them shift a few times during the entrances and exits of the HAZMATs. Those were the only wheels in this room.

Later. Maybe Whispers intended for him to live through this, after all. Most likely this was a reference to his future as a Bolger.

Listen. This one had stumped him. It could mean absolutely anything. Something to do with the Chairman, maybe?

His prayer was interrupted by the door swinging open for the first time in a long time. HAZMATs, but no Whispers. That was the first thing to strike him as odd. The next was a syringe sliding into his arm instead of his neck, and a warm feeling replacing the usual fits of agony that the needle brought. The heat spread from the crook of his elbow up to his shoulder, through his neck, and then his vision went black.

 

* * *

 

Seven figures stood huddled around a rickety table.

Three more, two women and a man, sat on the lumpy mattress on the floor, not ten feet away, shooting the larger group furtive glances as they discussed them. Hernando listened to the woman with the wild hair, Amanita, as she stage whispered an explanation to the dumbfounded pair, who stared at Lito with wonder as she spoke.

Hernando put a hand up to pause the speech. "How long has he been a part of all of this, exactly?" he asked in hushed tones, so Lito wouldn't hear.

"A year," Amanita replied.

He felt Dani's hand suffocate his as she asked Amanita, "Are you like them?"

"Me? Oh god no, I wish. That would make a lot of things a lot easier. I'm just a girlfriend. Well, fiancé." At that, Dani forced herself to brighten and they became distracted by talk of rings and venues, weddings and other such costume opportunities.

Hernando knew that the two of them just needed to think about something other than the madness across the room. He wished he was good at distracting himself like that, rather than doing what he was doing now, which was staring a hole into the back of Lito's head and praying he'd turn around and tell him this was all a joke. Some elaborate sex game, or in-depth research for a part Hernando didn't know about. As if on cue, Lito turned to meet his eyes. Hernando saw the blonde woman- Naomi? No, something close to that- touch Lito's arm affectionately and murmur in his ear. Lito nodded, never looking away from Hernando. When she was done, he walked over and joined them on the bed.

"Lito, please. I don't understand this, this has been going on for a year? This is absurd!" Hernando took Lito's hand and tried to keep his voice down for the people plotting not far away. "And now you're, what, breaking in somewhere?"

"Breaking and entering is a serious crime, Lito," Daniela added. "I don't know what you're trying to steal, but trust me. It can't be worth more than your career if you get caught. After all you've gone through lately with _Iberian Dreams-"_

Amanita jumped in. "They're not stealing anything, don't worry."

Lito's face said otherwise. "Well... it's complicated."

"Obviously it's fucking complicated, but you cannot keep not telling us. We think we understand the sensorium... concept," he gestured to Dani. "But what are we doing in London? Lito, this still makes no sense."

Lito's face grew darker, if it was even possible. Ever since Hernando had found him bleeding on the bathroom floor he'd been grim, nearly silent, save for a few times he mumbled to empty space or tried to stutter out half-explanations on the plane. Lito took a deep, shaky breath. "The organization that's hunting us, she told you about them?" They nodded, glanced to Amanita, glanced back.

"They have one of us. He was involved with organized crime, there was a woman who wanted to get him out of the way. She turned him in, and now we have to save him." Hernando looked nervously to Daniela, who was lost in thought, focused on twisting her pinky ring. This was a sensitive subject for her. He and Lito both waited for her to pick her head up and speak. She was cold when she did. "What kind of organized crime?"

"His family ran a large faction of the mafia in Berlin. He took down the organization himself, that's why they're all after him. This woman, she wanted him to lead and he wanted no part of it. He is a good man, Dani. He's not like the men you know. He- he saved you!" Hernando knew the expression Lito made when he swallowed his pride. It was the expression on his face now. "He saved you from Joaquin, not me. When I fought him. He was the one that did it, I didn't do anything. When we got kicked out of our apartment and I broke in? Remember? I don't know how to do that. He does; he helped us then, too. He doesn't need our help often- he doesn't ask for help. But he needs us now." Lito took a deep breath. "They're torturing him. Trying to find us. That is why I was bleeding back home, but it is even worse for him. Please, family, I understand the risk, but he is my family, too."

Hernando registered vaguely that his own mouth was wide open. Dani's had clamped closed as she took in what she was told. Hernando moved to break the silence when another person joined them. She'd been introduced to them as Kala. She was a beautiful girl clad in bright, cheerful pinks, but every time Hernando had seen her over the past few hours she had seemed... broken. Her eyes brimmed with tears when she'd embraced Lito for the first time, and Hernando had spotted several of the others stop her periodically to check in that she was alright. She stood next to them now, looking tragic but fiercely determined. She had been listening to their conversation, he assumed from the way she looked at them now. "It is not a choice," she forced out, "We are going to save him. Tonight."

She was going to say more, but the police officer called her back gently to the war table. She hurried over, her steps heavy. Hernando didn't realize how long he stared at her. He'd always been somewhat enthralled by the resilient, and whatever Kala was going through, she had no intention of letting it win. "What happened to her...?" he asked Lito sympathetically.

"She loves Wolfgang," he answered. Hernando should have guessed. Love, for all its complexities, was simple. And sad.

"He's the one that was captured?"

"Yes. She loves him like I love you." Lito squeezed his hand tighter. Hernando couldn't imagine what this girl was going through. He put himself in her place, tried to picture what it would be like. He could not fathom how she stood at that table. How she stood at all. Hernando had seen Lito crumple and felt every last atom in his body shout. He'd never been so terrified in his life, holding him as he bled was like having a flaming hot poker shoved down his throat. If this Wolfgang was actually going through all that, if Kala was here and not there to hold him like Hernando was able to for Lito, he didn't understand how she was breathing.

He was snapped out of his speculation by the police officer straightening to address the whole room. "Okay. This is it," he said. He had a comforting aura, Hernando decided. This was a man anyone could trust. He went on, "This plan seems insane, I know. But it's the only one and the best one we have. I've been working on this for weeks, I wish to God that I had more time to finish the details. But this is Wolfgang. We don't have a choice except to get him out, tonight. But this isn't like last year in Iceland, this won't be like that." Before continuing his speech he gave a loving glance to the girl standing at his right. Riley.

"They're going to be watching for us, they know how close I am to Whispers. If anyone of us gets caught, it's over, so just stick to the plan. Everyone going for Jonas, head there now. It's farther away, this timing has to be perfect. Down to the second, or everything could blow." Amanita stood up and joined the others. Hernando watched as the bus driver, followed by Amanita, Naomi (Nomi, that was it) and Sun moved to leave. The driver turned back to put his hands on either side of Kala's face. "Don't worry," he said soothingly. "You can hold him soon." He gave her a kiss on the forehead and departed with the two women.

His words hung in the air for just a moment before the others began dressing in bulky HAZMAT suits. Hernando noticed Lito looking more serious than he'd maybe ever seen him look. Hernando wanted to say something to him, but Lito was too busy wrapping Kala in his arms. After the driver had spoken to her, she'd shed the first tears anyone had seen from her since they'd been in London. Hernando couldn't blame her for crying- again, if he was her he'd probably be fetal. Now she was crying, but not sobbing. She let Lito hold her, but she simply stood, blank, as the tears fell. He marveled once again at her strength. When all this was over, he would ask her how she'd done it.

The tension in the room was palpable as the remaining four finished getting in disguise. Lito, before putting on a rather terrifying looking gas mask, pressed a reassuring kiss to Hernando's lips. "This will be dangerous?" Hernando asked.

Lito nodded.

"But you'll come back to us?"

He nodded again. "I will."

"And if you don't...?"

"I will. But if I don't... it will have been worth it, dying for someone I love."

That was something Hernando never thought Lito would say. Hernando loved him endlessly, but even he could admit Lito's fatal flaw had always been holding himself before others. To hear that he would die for someone else, for someone he's never met, made Hernando swell with a mixture of pride and fear. "Don't talk like that," Daniela snapped as she stood from the bed. "You're coming back. You are." Her eyes were glassy as she choked out a dry laugh. "And we are going to meet this guy you're risking your ass for, okay?"

"You will." Lito grinned. "Wolfgang is... Wolfgang is who I play in movies."

That would have to be a good enough goodbye, because the next moment he was kissing Hernando again, then he was out the door with the others, leaving Dani and Hernando alone in the cold gray squat.

 

* * *

 

_  
Wolfgang was swimming. He could feel the water slosh around in his socks, and his shirt clinging uncomfortably to his neck as it tried to float. The salty ocean stung his eyes, but he couldn't bear to close them. Not with her growing ever closer. She swam toward him, looking like there was nowhere else she'd rather be than in his arms. He reached a hand out to her, and felt her wrinkled fingers as he pulled her in. Her hair swirled around them, the sunlight breaking through the water to illuminate her looking down at him. With such love in her eyes._

_Wolfgang felt himself pulling away. Why was he pulling away? He willed his muscles to turn back to face her, but they didn't cooperate. Like machinery, they turned to swim away from her. He heard an echo of the crack he'd left in her heart getting deeper. If he wasn't careful it would break altogether. So why couldn't he turn around?_

He awoke, but didn't open his eyes. He regretted every moment he could have spent with her that he hadn't because of his own bruised perceptions. He had decided he was bad for her without letting her decide for herself. And he had missed so much because of it. He would probably never see her again, and all he had left of her were a handful of memories he could relive and try (but fail) to change as he did. He had handled his shitty love story as poorly as he had handled Sergei. Like him, it lay marred and bloody and dead, and it was all Wolfgang's doing.

He didn't want to open his eyes. He was tired of his reality in this room. Suddenly, a noise. A new noise. Wolfgang's ears perked up.

This is a safe. What do you do? Listen to the tumblers.

It sounded like a phone vibrating. What kind of BPO goon carried their smartphone in their pocket? A man answered solemnly, reluctantly. Again, Wolfgang understood a fair amount of his English, but not as much as he would have liked. Not enough to gather why the fuck he'd been knocked out and wheeled into a hallway. (Which he was sure he had been. There was more airflow than his room he had been kept in, and a habitual opening of various doors in different spots took him to this conclusion.)

The reluctant man on the phone was quiet as he listened to whoever was on the other line. "No. Ellison will see to it... We have him here... I am not at liberty to tell you the state of our Chairman... This is a dangerous game you are playing, Officer."

Wolfgang didn't like to hope; hope had always disappointed him. It had always led to his mother dying, or his best friend being mowed down, or the only woman he's ever loved being ripped from him. But he found the dangerous emotion creeping up on him anyway.

It had sounded like he may have been talking to Will. It had sounded like a negotiation, and it had sounded like Will was winning.

The corner of Wolfgang's mouth twitched. He decided to let hope in, for now. If somehow Will Gorski was actually able to get him out of here like he'd said he would, Wolfgang would owe him forever. He let himself picture his cluster, surrounding him.

With a jostle and a loud creak, Wolfgang woke from his reverie. He was being wheeled down the hall.

He prayed: Wheel. Later. Listen. Upset.

Wheel. He was being wheeled somewhere.

Later. He'd been knocked out, who knew how long it had been. Based on the cramps in his muscles, it had been a while, probably days. Maybe later was now.

Listen. It hadn't been 'listen' at all. El-lison. Ellison. Whispers.

Upset. Whispers would surely be upset if Will was in contact with anyone at BPO that wasn't him, they'd learned that at the Rijksmuseum. How would the cluster even get past Whispers to get to the weary man on the phone?

"Hit him again before you take him," said the same man to someone else in the hall. Another needle jabbed into Wolfgang's arm as his cot was rolled down the hallway. Before he passed out, he felt the wheels roll through a doorway and a brief flash of sunlight on his face. Hope.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not positive about this chapter, but the next one will be pretty freaking cool...(and hopefully won't take as long to finish)
> 
> ALSO if you ever wanna talk about sense8 or anything really, my tumblr url is shameful-shameless.tumblr.com


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WE'RE GETTING OUR PRECIOUS SHOW BACK!!!!! Let's celebrate with a new chapter of.......... basically just Whispers....

  
It was a few days ago, and Milton was afraid. He had feared what Will Gorski and his cluster could do to his influence in the organization for some time- but he had never feared _Will Gorski._ Until this, right now. The younger man had him cornered, literally, his back flat against the concrete wall. Blood oozed down his face at such a rate that he could feel his collar growing damp. 

The fresh cracks in Milton's glasses only added to this new impression of Will. Looking through them, he saw not the good cop, the good son, the noble savior that he had haunted for a year and then some. He saw a warped vision of death himself, his eyes filled with fire. Will Gorski wanted vengeance, and Milton was terrified. Because as soon as Jonas disappeared from him, it looked like Will Gorski was going to unequivocally get it.

The next time he was awake in any real sense, he had no idea where he was. Milton glanced around the dilapidated room. More of a hovel, really. He was seated on the dusty floor. Unsurprisingly, his wrists and feet were bound. Zip ties. The ties on his wrists were attached to the leg of a table that had been recently and sloppily bolted to the floor. The room was dimly lit, with dark patches of utter blackness in every corner, but even without his glasses he was able to make out a staircase, and a few shelves stocked with canned goods. A cellar, or a basement of some sort. About three feet from him, against the wall, two cheap wireless speakers sat aiming at him.

He was alone. He would have been able to break out of the zip ties easily if he was younger and not so out of practice. When was the last time he had been in physical danger? The closest he could conjure was a year and a half ago, when he had almost lost control of his horse during a weekend home. Elizabeth had been worried sick about him. Chelsea had laughed her girlish little laugh. If Will Gorski killed him tonight, he would die without having told his daughter about sensates, or simply how much she meant to him. How much he loved her. He muttered her name, softly, just to tether himself to reality.

"That's real beautiful," droned a voice from the shadows. So he wasn't alone. "Don't look so scared, Milt, I'd never kill you. Not tonight, at least. There's so much we need to talk about." Gorski emerged from the shadows. Death still rattling around in his eyes. "We have some questions to ask you."

Milton grimaced into what was probably a threatening smile. "I don't know what you think is going to come of this, Officer. But let me assure you that whatever fluke allowed you to get to me does not indicate your competence. You have no idea what you are doing. Whatever you do, you will not get one word. Not about this organization, and not about me."

At that, Will's face twisted in confusion. "Why would we ask about you, Milt? We already know everything there is to know about you." His head cocked to the side. "Nom? Tell him what we know about the neural graft."

"In 2002 you and Professor Kolovi developed the first prototype of the Traceworks," a new voice boomed from the speakers. "It only had mild effects until the addition in 2006 of Angelica Turing's research, tested primarily on her first cluster-"

"Enough," croaked Milton. Ms. Marks stopped, and Milton noticed Will was turned as though to talk to someone. No doubt it was Nomi herself. He looked to the general spot she must be visiting in. "Ms. Marks, nothing you uncover will be enough to compromise me. After your stunt with the late Mr. Croome, all valuable files have been eradicated. When it comes to me, Officer Gorski is the best hacker you could have. He is in my head, after all. Just as I am in his."

"Not right now, you're not," Will sneered. "You'd be surprised how easy it is to shove a blocker down someone's throat, even if they're unconscious. We have no interest in you."

Milton felt that fear again, prickling the back of his neck like sandpaper.

"We want to know about Wolfgang."

 

* * *

 

 

It was a week ago, and Milton was positively elated. He received a memo that one of his network of headhunters had a new sensate to turn in. Normally that news wouldn't come directly to him, he would find out once they'd been taken in for tracking. Business as usual, really. Irritated, he skimmed the memo.

The new sensate was being turned over by Lila Facchini, one of his less active headhunters, he noted. They kept her on the leash not because of her sensate hunting but because of her ties to the Berlin mob. Berlin was a crucial city for BPO, as an ideal place to track potential sensates. The club scene was so often landing young people in hospitals due to alcohol poisoning or drug abuse that a few lucrative deals with local facilities let them keep tabs on every last one. When an unborn sensorium in Berlin took one too many shots, there was no way for BPO to miss it. More new sensates had come out of Berlin, New York, and Rio over the last few years than anywhere else because of stupid kids wanting a rush.

The new sensate's name, he read, was Wolfgang Bogdanow. 28 years old, already born and connected to his cluster. The name seemed familiar- Bogdanow. Not too long ago, Milton had been notified that there had been a shift in the underworld of the city, spurred by the sudden death of some mob lord. He'd been given his name when it happened, but he'd forgotten it until now. Bogdanow. That had been it, hadn't it?

He read on. The sensate was being actively hunted, it said. One of his cluster had been found out, and he was on the run from BPO. Again, not uncommon. What was uncommon though, and what Milton was sure made this one special enough to find its way to his desk, was how long he'd been hunted. A year, Ms. Facchini claimed.

That was impossible, Milton thought. Once BPO knew about one in a cluster, it would be weeks, if not days until the rest were found. A full year? That couldn't be right, unless his compromised clustermate had found some way to-

Milton smiled. That couldn't be right, unless his compromised clustermate had found some way to escape.

That couldn't be right, unless this meaningless heir to the mob was one of Will Gorski's.

He had him. Just like that. No more fuss, no more dramatics. He looked again at the memo in his hand, bearing Wolfgang Bogdanow's exact address. This piece of paper was his new favorite thing, Milton decided. Because in his hand, he held not just Wolfgang Bogdanow, not just a new cluster waiting to be sliced open. He held Will Gorski, who had wronged him, almost cost him his entire life. He held the key to his undoing, and the undoing of everyone he housed in his thick head. Riley Gunnarsdottír. Nomi Marks. Both he had been so close to, and that two-bit beat cop had yanked them out from under him at the last second. He would have them now, because of this slip of paper. Them and Wolfgang and who knew how many others. How he looked forward to meeting them.

He picked up the phone and immediately ordered a private plane to Berlin Brandenburg Airport for himself and his best extraction team, to depart at once. There was absolutely no way he was letting this one slip through his fingers.

In a matter of hours, Milton was mere blocks away from his victory. Three vans sped down the street. He rode in the back of the third, looking wistfully at the gurney on which Wolfgang Bogdanow and his whole cluster would soon lay.

Lila Facchini had requested to speak to Mr. Bogdanow just before they went in. It had been her only request, and one Milton was willing to grant. She'd been instructed clearly that at exactly 1601 hours, they would go in. As he stood in the dirty hallway outside Wolfgang's apartment, Milton glanced at his American-made watch, telling him it was now 4:00:09. Out of curiosity, Milton held his ear to the door. He heard a low male voice that could only belong to Wolfgang speaking softly. Lila had yet to burst in and put the fear of God into him. There was a long pause, as though listening to someone else, and Wolfgang spoke again, meaning he was either on the phone or speaking to someone in his cluster. Milton hoped it was the latter- someone else he'd be meeting soon.

Milton cherished the moment, for a moment. On the other side of this door, a sensate was carrying out a conversation, with no idea of what was about to be wreaked upon him. Milton was reminded of watching a woman wake; the innocence before she gathers herself. 

Milton found joy in watching fear spring up in someone's eyes when he entered a room. He wondered what it would look like on Wolfgang Bogdanow. He'd soon find out.

4:01:00. 1601 hours.

The extraction crew crashed into the apartment ahead of him. Shouting, scuffling. To his surprise, he heard a few gunshots, followed by the unmistakable sound of just as many of his men falling - maybe this boy would be a refreshing challenge.

A taser, an anguished cry, knees hitting the ground. Milton stepped neatly over a white-clad body and entered the bedroom. He was greeted with the sight of a handsome blonde, withering to the floor. He watched Wolfgang's eyes dart to his, his pupils dilated in terror. Milton felt the almost imperceptible click of a new connection being made as their eyes met.

"Hello, Wolfgang."

Wolfgang's mind was screaming bloody murder; It was a cry so all-consuming, so full of rage and fear and tragedy that Milton almost didn't have to be connected to him to hear it. It would have gone on forever if he hadn't been knocked out by a syringe to the neck.

The remaining men carried Wolfgang from the building and into the third van, where Milton had ridden before. The doors to the other two swung open. Milton casually instructed the cleanup crew as they filed out of the vehicles that there were bodies to take care of, as well as the usual wipe down. They all nodded and headed up to complete their task.

Milton took the seat next to Wolfgang Bogdanow's limp form. Of course, he wouldn't be able to truly know him until he got him on the table, but based on his name and how easily he dispatched trained BPO operatives, he seemed promising. "Oh, Wolfgang," he whispered. "We are going to have such fun."

  
It was the next morning, and Milton was impatient. He'd been waiting anxiously for Wolfgang to wake up all night. Sleep had eluded him- he felt like a child about to open a birthday gift. He polished his tools, re-polished and re-polished them again. He doubted he would even use them, but he wanted the light to reflect off of them just so. He angled each one so they would be the perfect degree of visible to the man lying on the table once he woke up.

If he ever got around to it. Milton had even picked out his very favorite suit for the occasion; he'd hate for it to go to waste. But all this waiting. Milton usually prided himself on his patience, but this was getting ridiculous. He thought back to Iceland, a year ago. Riley Gunnarsdottír had been prone on a table much like this one, just as unconscious and just as vulnerable. Milton had thought he'd had the upper hand then, too. He had been wrong in the end.

Not this time. He would not let his impatience with this cluster get the better of him.

So he waited. And waited.

And waited.

Finally, a gasp from behind him. The restraints being pulled.

Milton whirled around, and sure enough-  
"There you are. I've been waiting. As you can see, I'm eager to get started." Why lie, Milton figured.

He approached the apparatus digging into the man's skull as if it were a priceless sculpture in a museum. Wolfgang had a sort of smirk on his face. Beautiful. It was no fun to break the broken ones. "This is the Traceworks. Your mother, Angelica, was instrumental to the success of it." The smirk disappeared. He could feel echoes of Wolfgang's emotions, like listening to music through water. This was a man not accustomed to being afraid. "This organization owes much to her."

"Now, the, psycellium is very sensitive to pain," he went on, "but acute pain produces one of the clearest echoes that we are able to trace." He smiled, and Wolfgang's lip curled up to bare his teeth like a rabid dog.

"I'm going to fucking kill you." These were the first words Milton had ever heard him speak. It was clear, from the cadence of his tone to the ice in his eyes that he meant every word. If given the chance, Wolfgang Bogdanow would kill him. Good thing he'd never be given that chance.

"This really is my favorite part."

 

It was three minutes later, and Milton was confused. "Tell me the first thought that enters your mind," he breathed. He plunged into Wolfgang's head, fully expecting to see Will Gorski, shaking like a leaf. It would only make sense that a sensate such as Wolfgang would reach out to the only other clustermate in as much danger as he was. But instead, Milton found himself in the baggage claim area of an airport, staring down at a clump of women huddled around someone on the floor. Milton caught a glimpse of the someone, and felt a wave of emotion crash on top of his head like a tsunami. 

"Ah _._ " That was an interesting surprise. He had taken Wolfgang to be stronger than this. Love within a cluster creates the weakest kind of sensate, that much he'd always known. And looking down at this girl, Wolfgang's love for her was almost too much to take. It was his entire being. Milton could feel it. The woman looked up and saw him, and warning bells went off inside of her. A second later, and Milton was in her place, opening her airline ticket. Her name flashed before his eyes.

"Kala. Ms. Kala Rasal."

There was Wolfgang's scream again.

For a fleeting second, Kala sat in his place on the table. Her blood-streaked expression looked like she was about to beg Milton for something. Or perhaps it was just grief.

Not that it mattered to him, because he knew about another one- five down, who knew how many more to go. This was clearly a large cluster.

Satisfied for now, Milton bid goodbye to the bloodied and beaten Wolfgang as his head lolled to the side. He had been right- this was a fun one.

 

* * *

 

  
"You're going to tell us where he is," Will threatened. "Now."

"And why would I do that?" Milton asked, putting on his best faux-innocent face. "I was having so much fun with him. I expect to have even more as soon as I return."

Will chuckled. "Yeah, okay. Like you're going somewhere before we have him back, right?"

"Once again, Mr. Gorski, I have to spell it out for you: you do not have the upper hand."

"Oh yeah? It looks to me like you just got the shit beat out of you, and I'm the one with BPO's favorite hunter tied to a fucking table." He didn't wait for a reply. "Great. Let's get started. Where's Wolfgang?"

Milton tilted his chin up, and said nothing. The speakers came to life again with a new voice. A woman's, but not Ms. Marks. "We can make you tell us."

"That must be Mrs. Rasal. Kala, I'm sorry our introduction was so brief-"

His taunts were cut short by Will Gorski's fist colliding with his face. "Don't you dare... speak to her," he said, low and menacing. "Where is Wolfgang."

Milton shut his mouth and didn't open it again for days. He didn't say a word through beatings, injections, or Nomi, rattling off all of his personal information through the speakers. His provisions included the grimy floor (bed), a bucket (toilet), and absolutely no use of his hands. (The bucket was, essentially, useless.)

One thing that he clung to, in fact, was the use of the speakers. He was on blockers, yes. But wherever his captors had gotten them from, their faith in their results was not absolute. If they were positive these blockers worked, the whole cluster would be sitting directly in front of him rather than cowering behind technology. It helped to remind him that this was just a cluster. He'd known many before. He could admit they were... different. But nothing he couldn't handle. (Although if he was being honest with himself, he was less and less sure of that every time he failed to reach the bucket.)

As time went on, he could feel his own resolve slipping through his fingers. He'd find himself wondering what the harm was in giving them Wolfgang's location- he would still be connected to him, after all. Or giving them someone lower in rank than himself to arrange his rescue. Something. He made a deal with himself: Him staying here for much longer would only hurt the organization.  
Right?

Therefore, if he were to give them the name of someone inconsequential, someone who would probably end up mysteriously disappearing as soon as his use ran out, then they would feel they had a victory. There was no way BPO would actually give them Wolfgang Bogdanow.  
Right?

He was foggy on whether this reasoning was an act of brilliance or cowardice.

But he did it anyway. He found his lips muttering a name.

"Michael Sabbith. Talk to Michael Sabbith." As he watched Will perk up at the words, Milton faced the truth, that he hadn't made a brilliant move of tact. He'd broken. Will Gorski, who he hadn't broken all year long, had broken him in a matter of days.

"Did you get that, Nom?" Will called out. "...Good." He turned back to look down at Milton, and left the room without a word.

 

* * *

 

  
It was today, and Milton was restless. They must be in contact with Sabbith- he regretted his moment of weakness yet again- by now. They must be approaching a deal. He mulled this over until Will came down the stairs, holding a burlap sack. This boy really had watched too many movies. He put the sack over Milton's head, and Milton felt the zip ties snap as Will cut them. He was too weak to take advantage of his new freedom, and was left with no choice but to let himself be heaved over Will Gorski's shoulder like a goddamned bag of flour.

He was carried up a flight of stairs, down a hallway, out a door, and into what seemed like a van. Will stayed in the back with him, Milton judged by the heavy mouthbreathing. Someone else must be driving. Sharp turns and sudden accelerations, until an abrupt stop.

"Okay then. This is it. Your lucky fucking day." Will didn't sound like a man victorious.

The doors opened. The bag was ripped off his head, and he drank in the scene around him. He was kneeling at the lip of the open van, with another beside him. Jonas. How they had even gotten their hands on him in the first place, Milton didn't understand, but he looked nearly as bruised as Milton felt. They were in a parking lot, overlooking the murky river. It was dusk. Thirty or so feet away, another BPO van stood with its hatch open. An occupied gurney was just visible inside- Wolfgang, drugged and unconscious.

In between he and them stood a smallish man. He had a hooked nose and watery eyes, the back of his hair just starting to fade into baldness. Michael Sabbith, who was now either the best negotiator in the organization, or the absolute worst. "Mr. Gorski, I presume," he called out. "I hope we can settle this amicably."

Will muscled his way between Milton and Jonas to meet Sabbith. He kept his distance, ready to flee at a moment's notice. "Only if you kept up your end. You alone?"

"Yes."

"Prove it."

"Do you see anyone?"

From his position, he could see only Will's back, but Milton knew he was weighing his options, could almost see him biting his lip. "Let's get this over with. You get these two, we get Wolfgang. Just like we agreed on the phone, and no one gets hurt more than they already are."

"Alright."

"Wolfgang first."

Sabbith made a noise of protest. "We do this at the same time."

"No, I don't think so," Will responded quickly. "Wolfgang first."

Sabbith sized Will up, and made the choice not to push his luck. Will was a lot larger than him, and looked to Milton to be itching for a fight.

Perhaps that wasn't Will standing there at all.

Sabbith sighed. "Very well." He reluctantly started wheeling the gurney from his van to theirs. When he got to where Will stood, a hand flew out to stop him. "Oh no. You're not getting any closer; give him to me." Sabbith released his grip on the gurney, held his hands up like Will was about to arrest him.

Will looked down at Wolfgang laying beside him, and put a hand on his shoulder. (Milton knew what was coming- he knew what happened the first time two clustermates met in real life.) He could feel the sheer overwhelming love radiating from the two men. It was sickening.

Wolfgang gasped and shot up to his elbows. He shook, but refused to fall. He looked heavily up at Will, then his eyes drifted to land on Milton himself.

The warmth Wolfgang had just been wrapped in morphed to white hot rage. He tried to lunge, murder in his limbs, but Will held him back. Wolfgang screamed, out loud this time. Despite his weakness, he screamed at Milton a string of German so full of hate it needed no translation. Sabbith took several steps back, struck with fear by his own prisoner.

Wolfgang was visibly losing steam, but showed no willingness to stop until Will forced his hand over his mouth, muttering to him in German. Wolfgang quieted but refused to lay back down. Adrenaline was fueling him; as soon as he was taken back to that shithole his cluster called a safe house he would be near-comatose.

Once Will was satisfied with Wolfgang's silence, he stepped backward toward his own captives. He seized them both by the collars and dragged them unceremoniously to lay in front of Sabbith's feet, never breaking eye contact with the man. As the asphalt scraped against Milton's back through his mangy suit, he felt that familiar rush of Will Gorski-flavored hatred rush back into his heart.

"We done?" Will asked.

"Yes," Sabbith gulped like the boy he was. Milton would make sure he paid for this display of weakness, this disaster of a prisoner swap. A disaster because anyone watching would be able to tell that the Biologic Preservation Organization had just been brought to its knees by... who? A cop? A hacker? A thief? A pharmacist? A DJ? 

"Good," Will replied. Milton heard him wheel Wolfgang into the back of his van, and felt gravel whip across his face as the only cluster to ever get close to him sped further and further away.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what's linear storytelling? idk never heard of her

This had to be a dream.

One second, he was floating in the blackness of drug-induced sleep. Next, there was a hand on his shoulder, and he felt his soul lurch up, up, up out of the darkness. His eyes flew open against all reason. The hand was hot, like when his father would nick him with the poker from the fireplace as a child. "Have a sense of humor, boy!" he'd roar with laughter as Will shook from the momentary pain the metal brought.

Will?

No, not Will, Wolfgang. Wolfgang, whose father sat him down after a long shift and said, "Here's one thing 20 years on the force'll teach you, Willy. If the guy is guilty, and he tosses and turns in his sleep, you take it easy on him. _He_ regrets it, see. But if the guy is guilty and he sleeps like a rock, then he's one of the ones you need off the streets. He's one of the bad guys. Got it? Bad men sleep easy." Wolfgang nodded, and let his dad pull him in for a hug, ignoring how his hands shook as he did.

Will's mother, taking him to the zoo to look at the tigers. Wolfgang, waking up to find Sarah Patrell at the foot of his bed. Will, meeting Felix in detention. Wolfgang, holding the hand of Sarah's mother. Telling her she was a memory.

He stood next to his own body, looking down at Will. He felt the stretcher against his back, the ground under Will's feet. He didn't know when he propped himself up on his elbows, or why or how. He did know that Will was here. The soft young police officer with a gentle smile and a wicked right hook was real. Maybe all of them were.

Wolfgang was able to look away from him for long enough to absorb his surroundings. Some kind of parking lot, a van stood open not five meters away... with Jonas and Whispers staring right at him. Whispers' beard was caked with blood, he was clearly Will's prisoner.

Wolfgang couldn't stop himself, didn't want to. He'd been careful not to lose his temper since the incident at Sergei's mansion. His temper usually ended with someone dead, and after that day he had too much to lose. But the words shot out now, as quick and loud as the rounds that flew into his uncle over a year ago.

"You- _how can you sit there, you fucking swine! I'm going to rip you to pieces for this! You will die fucking slow and painful, and if I find out that you hurt her-"_

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Will tried to calm him down. "Wolfgang, hey, it's fine! She's not in danger, you'll see her soon-"

Wolfgang kept going. He didn't stop until Will clamped a hand over his mouth. His voice echoed through his head.

_You're jeopardizing your own rescue mission. Calm down._

Wolfgang forced himself to hold off.

_You can't give him to them, Will. Then none of this ends._

_It's better than not having you._

_More people will get hurt._

_I know. But it's already done._

Before Wolfgang could protest any further, Will was gone from his side. He stalked over to drag Whispers and Jonas to someplace behind Wolfgang, where he couldn't see. "We done?"

"Yes," said another hitched voice. It was the same man who had been on the phone earlier, Wolfgang was certain.

"Good." Will pulled Wolfgang into his van and shut the door behind them. Immediately Wolfgang felt the rush wear off. His elbows buckled, and his head would have smacked against the hard surface of the stretcher had Will not reached out a hand at the last second to cradle it and ease it down. "Wolfgang, you're okay," he was trying to sound soothing.

"You're safe. You will be fine," piped up Capheus, who must have been driving. Actual _Capheus_ , in the flesh. Wolfgang couldn't see him, but he was there. "Everyone is waiting for you."

Wolfgang felt the blackness start to consume him again, but this time he welcomed it.

When he woke up, she was there.

 

* * *

 

 

Kala paced back and forth along the length of the room. "How much longer?"

"Again," said Nomi from behind her laptop, "I can't be sure. I still think we should've been off blockers for this."

"No. This was the right choice," Sun replied evenly. She was on the bed, sitting against the headboard with her legs outstretched. "If Will and Wolfgang are off blockers, it is no threat to us, for now. Whispers already knows them. But if we are off blockers, we are put at risk through them." They had been over this many times, but saying it again and again was the only way to convince themselves it was a good idea.

Sun hissed with pain, and turned her right leg as best she could. Kala started, and ran to her side. "How is it? Is it worse? Rank the pain."

"Eight."

"Better, then."

"A little."

Lito gingerly sat down next to her, took her hand in his. "Thank you again," he whispered. "I would be dead if not for you. I'm so sorry."

"Why 'sorry'?"

"If not for me, you wouldn't be in pain."

Sun shook her head. "It was nothing. I have had worse, in less important fights than this."

As she changed the large bandage on Sun's thigh, Kala wondered how Wolfgang would react when he found out about the failed rescue mission. How half of his cluster had been a breath away from death, all for him. How they almost didn't have to give up Whispers and Jonas, until they did. He would be angry, she thought. If he lives to hear about it, that is. If he ever comes back.

"It is not infected." (Kala hoped they ignored the tremor in her voice.) "But you won't be able to walk for some time."

"Kala," Riley approached her from behind. (They weren't ignoring it.) "You need to rest. When was the last time you slept?"

For the first time, Kala thanked the gods that she was on blockers. If she wasn't, Riley would be able to see that she hadn't slept in days. When she had, it had been in sweaty fits of thirty minutes or so, and been filled with dreams of blond hair, blue eyes, and blood. The one occasion that she'd had a good dream- _his_ _arms_ _around_ _her_ _as_ _the_ _Paris_ _sun_ _set_ , _no_ _ring_ _weighing_ _down her finger. Utter silence but for the bustle of the street below, and his murmuring in her ear-_ she'd woken up far more shattered than she had from any nightmare.

She'd vowed not to sleep, for fear of having a pleasant dream. That had to be a sign that her life was in shambles.

Kala wasn't as proficient a liar as Lito, but she was able to tell Riley that she'd gotten three hours of sleep last night. Riley knit her brows together, told her that wasn't nearly enough. Kala said she would try to sleep better tonight. That was a lie, too, whether Wolfgang showed up here alive or not.

Kala had never been one to pity herself. When she was stuck in a sad situation she would walk herself through it, surgically. Logically. She would pour her heart out to Ganesha, or just sit up in bed as everyone else slept and untangle the mess step by step. Since he was captured, she had been completely unable to do that. Fitting, because all he ever did was strip her of her logic. It only made sense that he still did it in his absence. She would be mixing chemicals to inject into Whispers, or making new blockers, and she'd try to piece her situation together like everything was normal, and she would always fail.

She knew how he felt about her as if they were her own emotions. She could feel shadows of the way he exploded when they kissed, or when she turned her head to the light just so, or when she ran her fingers along his cheek. She had never understood how he didn't seem to feel the way he affected her right back. The way _she_ exploded when he smiled. How his eyes would light up, his jaw would set, how he smirked when someone underestimated him. How no matter what he'd seen and been, he could never bring himself to lie. She had been exploding since the first moment she saw him below that balcony. She who had never known what it was like to be touched, suddenly would feel empty without his.

And now, he might never understand.

These thoughts were blocking all her reason, and had been for days and nights on end. Her cluster needed her steady head now more than ever, and Kala had been failing them.

She'd kept her cool up until the first mission. They had extracted Whispers and Jonas, and dropped them off in their makeshift cells. But they had been stupid. They assumed Wolfgang would be in the same facility Whispers had been in.

They had gone back in, but now they were expected. Sun and Will had stayed and fought the first onslaught of men while Kala, Lito, and Capheus snuck past to find Wolfgang. Riley had stayed to try and help Nomi knock out as many security cameras as she could, but BPO's cyber infrastructure remained near-invincible. That should have been their first hint to turn around.

Kala hurried in front of Lito and Capheus, all three of them wearing HAZMAT suits. They checked in every room they found, down hallways, up stairs, around corners, and found no sign of Wolfgang. They saw labs, pharmacies, even a few fake rooms like the one Whispers used to communicate with Will. Not a single room resembled the one Wolfgang was trapped in.

They were on blockers (another mistake) but they could tell they were too far into the facility. Distantly, they heard a gunshot. They turned around and sprinted back to the loading dock where they had left Will and Sun. Several bodies lay at their feet, but the fight hadn't ended. It seemed that every time one of them had taken out a henchman, another had run to appear in his place. Currently, Will and Sun were back to back, each fighting a man in a green BPO jacket. They all knew at once that their only chance was to escape now. Sun kicked her opponent squarely in the chest, sending him flying backwards.

Lito ran towards her. The next few seconds happened around Kala in slow motion.

Lito was facing Sun, trying to tell her that Wolfgang wasn't here, they had to leave before more men showed up. Behind him, the man in green, who had been laying like a rag doll, rose. A gun that Kala assumed Sun had stripped him of lay to his left. He picked it up, leveled it at the back of Lito's head.

Sun noticed it instantly, her eyes wide. With inhuman speed, she attacked not the man, but Lito, using his shoulders as a boost to wrap her legs around his head. With a violent twist, she had Lito on the ground. But at some point in between her climb up to Lito's head and him landing onto the hard cement, the gun went off. Sun cried out, and landed awkwardly on top of Lito, blood pouring from her right thigh and onto his chest. Will whirled around from the man he'd just pistol-whipped into unconsciousness, and shot her attacker straight through the heart.

They heard footsteps thundering towards them. Capheus darted to pick up Sun and carry her into the van. The rest of them followed, leaving Kala to drive. She was able to get the van out of the loading dock, albeit with trembling hands.

That was the last use she felt she'd been to the group. And even then, it had just been because Capheus was occupied with Sun's injury and couldn't drive himself.

She reminded herself that this was an irrational feeling- she had been making blockers, tending to Sun's wound, taking care to measure out the poisons they'd been introducing into Whispers' system so as not to kill him. She'd never liked the idea of causing others pain until Wolfgang, who seemed to be a walking target for half the people on the planet. But she found herself more than willing to cause pain, death, apocalyptic levels of destruction to protect him if needed. It was needed now.

They had retrieved the name of a contact at BPO from Whispers, and had reluctantly offered Jonas in exchange for Wolfgang. They'd been refused. Then they offered Whispers, and not Jonas. Again, no deal.

Finally, they had to face the reality that either they'd all be discovered and turned into Bolgers, or they had to give up the only bargaining chips they'd ever had to play against BPO. When they set the meeting, it had hardly felt like a victory.

So now she just had to wait. Since the first attempt at rescuing Wolfgang, Kala had found talking to the rest of the cluster more unhelpful than she'd ever found it before. Probably because their desperation to have him back was so akin to hers that there was almost nothing to discuss.

Which is how Hernando became her closest confidante. He approached her the night of the botched rescue, after she'd first gotten Sun's leg to stop bleeding. Sun had fallen asleep on Lito's shoulder, with a frown etched on her face.

Kala had been sitting on the floor, leaning against a table leg, when Hernando moved to sit down opposite her. "Kala, right? May I sit?"

She'd nodded.

"All of this... it can be a lot to take?" he asked. He hesitated, the way he did when he was about to ask a difficult question. Kala remembered fondly the time he had asked Lito if he could have a key to his apartment, and he'd made the same nervous face. "I don't pretend to understand. And I don't know you, and you don't know me... or I suppose you do."

Kala felt the corner of her lips turn up. "Only what Lito knows."

Hernando flushed. "Well then. You _do_ know me." Kala didn't know if Lito had let him in on the number of people he'd been making love to in that bathroom at the salsa club. She didn't want to be the one to tell him.

"I just think... if you need someone to talk to, I am here," he said. He took her hand in his. His hand was just as soft and warm as it was when she'd held it through Lito's head. Kala thought back to the events of the last days, the last hours. And something about Hernando's hand holding hers made the tension mounting within her break like a fever.

She cried. She felt her whole body shake with silent, convulsive sobs. Hernando wrapped her up in his arms, and she sat there weeping into his shoulder for the rest of the night. Lito joined them, then Nomi, then Capheus, then Riley, and soon all the room's occupants save for Sun were huddled on the floor. Some laid down to sleep. Some held Kala's hand. Some cried for themselves, or for Wolfgang. And some just sat, staring at the newspaper covered windows, waiting for the morning to come.

 

Now that Kala could be mere minutes from seeing him, alive, she was more restless than ever. "This is Will and Capheus we're talking about," reminded Nomi. "Kala, we couldn't have sent two more even-minded people if we tried. Trust me, nothing will go wrong."

Kala nodded, and continued absentmindedly chewing a hangnail (she'd long since run out of fingernails long enough to gnaw on). The last time she'd seen him, she hadn't been able to say goodbye. He'd been tortured in that horrible place; she had no idea what to expect from him now. Would he be himself? Would he even be whole? The grim possibilities flashed in front of her face like a gut-wrenching slideshow.

A coded rap on the door sounded out. Two quick knocks, a pause, then a third. "It's them," Sun said.

Kala ran and opened the door to reveal Will's back. He craned his neck around. "A little help?"

He was carrying someone by the armpits, with Capheus propping up the legs.

Someone.  
  
Kala didn't have time to take in Wolfgang's appearance. "Bring him in, set him down. Quickly." She was surprised by the mathematical tone of her voice. Assisted by Lito, they lifted Wolfgang into the room as Sun shifted on the bed to make room for him. They rested him on the open space as tenderly as they could. The group took a step back and surrounded him, surveying him the way medical students survey a procedure they hope to learn.

They all were thinking the same thing. He looked terrible. Beyond terrible.

The medical scrubs he was dressed in, once white, were a horrifying tie-dye of grays and reds. Kala didn't need to wonder if they had ever bathed him. They hadn't. All of the blood they'd forced out of him from the moment the first paddle touched down was still there in sickening clarity. Trails of hardened black, gooey brown and glistening red alike spread from his ears, mouth and nose. He was sweating so profusely that Kala's thoughts were wrenched back to her first wedding, how he'd just emerged from a swimming pool. He somehow was more drenched now.

"We should let him rest," she heard herself say. She didn't want to let him rest. She wanted to force him awake, make his eyes open and look into hers. She was tired of waiting for him. She had expected her anxiety to magically vanish as soon as he entered the room. How stupid of her.

The others made various noises of assent, and rounded on Will and Capheus to tell them everything that had happened with Sabbith. Kala knew she should be listening, she should want to know. But instead she left the group and drifted over to sit on the floor next to Wolfgang. Tentatively, she threaded her fingers through his. She was on blockers, he was unconscious, so why she thought the world would crash around her ears she didn't fathom. All she felt was his hand. Warm, calloused, his. Until he woke up, that would have to be enough for her.

It would be 11 hours, 16 minutes and 48 seconds before he did. 

And when he did, she was there.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah we're gonna wait a lil longer for that kalagang reunion. i'd hate me too..... let me know how mad i made you by commenting?


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GUYS. I GOT CARRIED AWAY, THIS IS SO MUSHY YOURE GONNA GET A CAVITY JUST GO WITH IT

The first time they met, they were in her father's restaurant. He came sauntering to the door and strolled confidently inside. He took a menu from her father, peeked over it until he saw her shoes descending the stairs. He stood up. She saw him, and stopped cold. Her face burst into a blinding grin, and she ran toward him. He scooped her up in his arms, felt her skin crackle with electricity against his. Everyone watched them while they kissed.

He'd imagined it as he paid for the waterlogged coffee that he'd barely touched. He could still smell marigold.

The first time they met, it was in an airport. She'd flown to see him and visit Felix in the hospital. He waited nervously in the baggage claim area, and then- there she was. They walked towards each other, painfully slowly. Gravity pulled them closer and closer and closer until she was a breath from him. She pulled him in, kissed him so softly he thought he might fall apart. And for the first time in years, he cried. Like a part of him had wanted to do for so long, he cried into her shoulder for Felix, for himself, for all the times he hadn't cried but should have. She ran her fingers through his hair, and whispered how she loved him in Hindi.

He'd imagined it as he ran out of loose threads to count on Felix's hospital bedsheets.

The first time they met, it was in Kuwait, just about halfway between them. He'd imagined it after her second wedding.

The first time they met, it was in Seoul, to help Sun start her new life, then start one for themselves. He'd imagined it after they'd helped her escape.

The first time they met, it was in Chicago. Mexico City. Nairobi. Reykjavik. San Francisco. St. Petersburg. São Paulo. Toronto. Amsterdam. Beijing. Los Angeles. Rome. New York. Buenos Aires.

Paris.

He'd imagined it every morning and every night, every spare moment at the key shop, every time he saw a woman with wild hair walking down a street, every time he felt Will and Riley kiss, every time he danced with yet another woman who was so frustratingly, infuriatingly _not her_ , every second that she stood in front of him asking him for truth, every time they kissed without kissing or held each other while holding nothing at all.

The first time they met was not supposed to be like this. He hadn't imagined this, ever.

He'd imagined every scenario, every location, every sensation. None of that could remotely prepare him for whatever it was that was happening now.

Wolfgang was discombobulated as he stirred awake. Whatever he was laying on, it wasn't the cold table that he'd grown used to. It was soft, almost like a bed. He didn't feel anything pressing into his chest, arms, or scalp. His wrists and ankles were free. There was fresh air in this strange room, and no bright light inches away from his eyes. The memory washed over him softly, but all at once. He'd been rescued by Will. Will and Capheus. In a van. They had told him that everyone was waiting for him. 

He forced his eyes open. He couldn't sit up, but he was able to lift his head, an inch off the mattress, maybe. He shifted his left arm, and was met with smooth flesh, a scalding hot ember. Someone was on the bed next to him. He jerked his hand away from the sudden shock, but not before seeing sharp flashes of a cancer ward, a kickboxing ring, a prison cell, a piece of rebar scraping temptingly across asphalt. Sun.

He felt her jolt as well, as she saw diamonds and detention and jasmine. She said nothing for a long moment. They were made of the same thing. All this did was prove it. Sun spoke softly.

"She is to your right."

He reached his other arm out, weakly. Hope was dangerous. Hope is dangerous.

Wolfgang felt someone start to move, sit up on the floor next to the bed. "You're awake?" she whispered. She might as well have screamed it. Her voice was so clear; he'd really thought he'd ever heard it before?

He was able to nod.

She saw a fuzzy outline of her kneeling beside him, just visible in the dim light barely passing through the newspapered windows. "Wolfgang-"

_Say that again. Say that again. Say that again._

"I'm going to touch you now."

He almost wanted to say no. This wasn't how she was supposed to meet him. She wasn't supposed to have a voice full of tears when she said his name for the first time. She wasn't supposed to, but at the same time, if she _didn't_ touch him right now, he would have to find a way to jump out that window.

Her hand shook as it came closer to his cheek. She stopped, hovered her slim fingers inches away from his overgrown, blood soaked beard. Wolfgang closed the distance, and pressed his face to her palm.

Wolfgang and Kala knew seven languages, but not a word of any of them existed. Not now. The room flooded with light from the Bombay sun, and Berlin rain puddled around their feet.

At a parade, they looked together through the eyes of Ganesha. In a zoo they dreamed of a tiger's destiny.

Under a balcony, they looked over his shoulder. At a cafe, they widened her dark eyes ever so slightly at the sight of him. They sang a song to her. They asked her what the fuck she was doing, she wasn't in love with him. They called him a demon, they chuckled at his new favorite nickname. They told him about her passions, religion and science as obligate mutualisms. They watched her light up as she mused over quantum physics. They felt a bomb come to life in her fingers, and explode in his. They wept at the sight of her monster, who wasn't a monster at all. They spent the next months avoiding her. They slipped on his ass in the snow. They dove into her pool, joined and parted. They told her that what mattered was this, us. They felt the shocks of the paddles, they begged and begged the man behind them to leave her alone, stop hurting him like this.

She had both hands cupping his face now. They each felt the other flicker back and forth. His cheek, her cheek, her hand, his.

They faced each other this way for a baffling moment. It may have been an hour, or a day, or a millisecond.

His gaze weighed a thousand tons. Kala saw Wolfgang's lips part to say something. She felt her breath stop; he'd never spoken to her before.

"Nice to meet you."

Wolfgang reveled in the smile making its way across her face. She brought her forehead to his. "'Nice to meet you?'" She choked out a sound that was almost a laugh.

For the first time in a long time, he had a reason to smile, too. "It's nice to meet you, too" she replied.

The first time they met, it was in an abandoned London flat. He was laying on the bed, scarred, bloody, and weak. She was kneeling next to him, sleep deprived, desperate, and crying. But he hadn't imagined it. It was real. For the first time, it was real.

The rest of the cluster had stirred when they touched. Riley held Will tighter in her arms as they slept. Nomi's dreams, usually in black and white, snapped into blinding color. For the rest of the night, the room hummed silently. When the sun began to rise, Wolfgang was the first to see it. He squinted his eyes against the blurred light seeping in through the newspapers. Kala sat on the floor next to him still, criss-crossed, turning his hand over and over in hers.

Neither of them spoke. Pretty soon the others would begin to wake, and the war would continue. But for the time being, they had the sunlight.

It didn't last long.

Amanita stood and stretched. She didn't see Wolfgang or Kala, instead walking over to the sink to splash water on her face. She turned back and jumped at the sight of Wolfgang, who knew he hadn't been cleaned up yet and most likely looked like a monster out of one of Capheus' movies. She padded over as softly as she could, and squatted beside Kala. "Sorry," she whispered. "I'm not used to being the first one awake." He could see her conscious effort to keep pity out of her face. "So. You're the mysterious Wolfgang. How are you feeling?"

How was he fucking feeling?

Mercifully, Kala answered for him. "I need to be able to run some tests and such on him later. He's been awake for much longer than I thought he'd be able to be, which is a good sign." Amanita nodded as she followed along. "If I can do anything to help," she offered, "just let me know. Nomi will be up soon." With that, she stood and resumed her place laying with her fiancé. The war was postponed a few minutes longer.

"Wolfgang!" a voice spoke sharply, excitedly from across the room.

Will was awake, and Will always had the war on his heels. For as warm as he was, for as lovely and brave and soft as he was, his mind was always half with BPO, with Whispers or Angelica or with the target on his own back.

Right now, though, he seemed to be consumed with nothing but Wolfgang as he bounded over, less than gracefully. Several others sat up at the noise. Soon, Wolfgang was surrounded by his whole cluster. They all were too nervous to touch him, but he could feel them itching to.

He just wished he could open his eyes all the way, or lift his head enough to get a good view of his family. It was as if they were movie stars he'd only seen in magazines and on TV, and all of the sudden they stood in front of him, flesh and blood. They looked the same as they had in his head, yet they were all so different.

"He needs space," Kala said. The cluster backed up obediently. "He needs a bath," Nomi added. Wolfgang just barely smirked. He probably reeked. Out of the corner of his eye, Kala nodded.

He recognized the safe house now. It wasn't a safe house at all, but the flat where Riley and Will had been staying for weeks. The only benefit of this cramped and dirty space was that they all knew the layout already. Other than that, it was filthy, full of memories of the horrible days that followed Michael Gorski's death.

The bathtub was behind a screen in the corner. Capheus and Lito helped prop Wolfgang up and into the water, which didn't get any warmer than lukewarm. Kala was afraid to hurt him, he knew. She let out a small gasp at the scars on his chest, raised and angry. She didn't say anything about them; she was hoping he didn't notice her reaction.

Before long, the water was a horrible shade of dark reddish brown. Wolfgang never looked away from Kala for a second. As she cleaned the flecks of blood out from his beard, she caught his eye. "What?" she asked.

Wolfgang had nothing to say. "What is it, Wolfgang?" she breathed. "Where are you?"

_Hey, Wolfie! Where the fuck are you?_

He felt sick to his stomach. He'd forgotten, how had he forgotten? Wolfgang leaned forward and choked out, "Felix."

"What?"

"Felix. Where is he."

Kala shook her head. "We haven't- I don't- We didn't pull him in, he's in Berlin. We thought you'd want him to stay out of this, where he could be safe."

Wolfgang tried to reply, but his voice betrayed him. He squeezed his eyes shut and thought as hard as he could. He heard his own voice echo through Kala's mind-

_He's not safe in Berlin. If Lila wanted me taken down, she wanted the same for him. Her way of getting rid of me was BPO, but he's a sapien, all she has to do is kill him. Not to mention that Fuchs wants me dead, and Felix is the easiest way to get to me. He doesn't trust Lila anymore. Killing him would be simple, for either of them._

"We won't let that happen." He felt her wet palms on his cheeks.

_Maybe it already has._

If Wolfgang had the physical strength to vomit his guts onto the floor, he'd be doing it. He barely registered Kala reassuring him that no, there is no way Felix was dead, they would make sure of that and they would keep him alive. Wolfgang's vision went in and out of focus. He felt himself standing at the war table, plotting their next move. He flickered from person to person, sharing with his cluster sporadically, one by one. He couldn't anchor his mind back to his own body.

He knew where he was being dragged.

Wolfgang was standing in a bathroom. He could hear water dripping off of his body and smacking onto the marble floor. He faced the mirror, blocked by a figure in black, inspecting their reflection.

"Wolfgang," Lila cooed. "I see you're all dressed up to see me."

He didn't want to be here. He tried to leave, to be back in the dirty bath in the dirty flat, but he stayed planted right where he was. Lila turned and moved closer to him. "You look skinny. But I don't imagine they let you run around in there."

She thought he was still in the facility, of course. BPO wasn't about to admit its losses to its employees. Lila must have sensed that something was off, and he felt her moving closer, trying to visit him. If she did that, she would know Kala, sitting right in front of him. He pushed her out as best he could. "What? You don't want me there?"

She pushed harder. Wolfgang tried to fortify the wall he'd thrown up, but he didn't know how. She was slipping through the cracks, and all of the sudden he was back in the bath with her smirking down at him. "You escaped? Smart boy." She turned her head to take in the room, and her gaze settled on Kala, who was panicking over Wolfgang's sudden departure. "Who is this?" Lila mused. "Is this her?"

First Whispers, and now Lila. He felt the same guilt he'd felt watching him open that plane ticket, it was tearing a hole through his chest. Wolfgang didn't allow himself to look anywhere but straight at Lila. He bit his tongue. "She's cute. What's her name?"

Wolfgang tasted blood.

She smacked her lips."You don't have to tell me, then."

Kala noticed Wolfgang had returned, she tried to pull his chin gently to face her. "What's wrong? What is it?"

"Don't say a word," he snapped. "Don't let anyone say anything." He didn't turn away from Lila, but he felt Kala understand. "Is someone here?" she asked. "Whispers?"

"Stop," he warned.

Kala knew. "It's her."

Lila pressed a hand to her heart. "You told her about me." She watched Kala jump up and hurry past the screen dividing the tub from the rest of the room. Lila wandered over to peek past it. Wolfgang tried to force himself to his feet, but immediately collapsed back into the water. "A big cluster, I see. Other than your woman, I count nine. I've never met a cluster with more than eight, but _eleven_? No wonder the Cannibal wanted you."

She walked backwards to where he could see her, her high heels splashing into the small puddle he'd made when he fell. "What did you do with Felix?" he demanded.

She raised an eyebrow. "Your friend? As soon as he found out you were dead, it was clear to Sebastian he wasn't a threat. He tried to kill me. It was cute." At Wolfgang's wide eyes, she added, "We didn't kill him. That would be a waste of our resources." She paused. "You see? I'm being nice to you, Wolfgang. Now that you're out of my way, I think we can be friends again. Don't you?" She didn't wait for a response, just gestured towards Wolfgang's silent cluster. "And if you don't... I know what they look like. Thank you for this."

She was gone. He shouted for Kala.

Kala was at his side in an instant, along with the rest of them. He sputtered out the whole story, switching from words to thoughts when he ran out of breath. Which was often.

When he was done, they stood quietly. "What do we do?" Riley asked the empty air.

"This isn't as bad as we think," Will said. "Felix is alive," Capheus agreed. "We should bring him here, to help. Wolfgang, before you protest- you said yourself he was in danger there. And he thinks you dead. He does not deserve to think such a thing."

"Nomi-?" Will started, but Nomi was already across the room and on her laptop. "I'm tracking him down. We'll contact him as soon as I can secure the network and get him over here without a trace. It'll be easy."

Lito stepped out in front of the gathered sensates. "Lila thinks there are eleven of us in the cluster."

"She must have been counting us, too," Dani joined them. "Me and Hernando and Amanita."

Sun, who was visiting from her sickbed not twenty feet away, addressed Wolfgang only. "This can only help us. She will report the visit to BPO. If they have misinformation, it buys us time."

"She's right," Will said. "But for now, you need to be on blockers. She could be back any second."

Wolfgang spoke for the first time since he told them what Lila had done. "You too. Whispers will be back to work before long. He can get to both of us now."

It was a sobering statement. It sunk in then, to everyone, that everything was different. They had leveled the playing field, but only enough to advertise themselves as worthy adversaries. Not enough to cause lasting damage.

Whispers had wanted a war, and they had agreed to give him one. That didn't mean they weren't losing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the delay! updates are going to be a *little* slower for a while just because i'm working on a big ass breakfast club au that is going to be VERY big and long and hopefully fun
> 
> this wasn't a super eventful chapter i know. but i'm a sappy mess and i decided to postpone plot in favor of gooey romance so sue me. or just comment! (ALSO i've decided to start being a normal nice person and actually reply to comments instead of reading them, crying, and not saying anything)


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all. i miss felix. have some felix.

Wolfgang had been helped into some of Will's clothes, which were full of holes and an abundance of empty space between his emaciated body and the fabric. Will reminded him cheekily that his things would be too big for him either way. The muscled fuck. Riley nudged him, warned him away from teasing someone as ill as Wolfgang, who was quick to remind her that he didn't care. Truthfully, he wanted things to feel normal as soon as possible.

But nothing was normal. For starters, they were together. It was something none of them could ever quite get used to, not even Will and Riley, who'd been in the same place for almost a year. All eight sensates were now living under one roof, and it was impossible to settle into a habit. Lito and Capheus would accidentally bump shoulders and double over, coughing up Wolfgang's blood. Nomi and Riley would share a look across the room, and the same thought would burst into their heads: _My heart is not soft. I should have killed him_. Will would sleep and dream of his father's restaurant, his in-law's disapproval, and his husband's constant worry. He would wake and realize he'd fallen asleep with his hand just barely grazing Kala's. This became their normal.

Wolfgang was propped up against the wall, sitting in his place on the bed next to Sun. Will brought over two cups of water and two black pills. He sat down at the foot of the mattress. "Do you need help?" he asked kindly. Wolfgang shook his head no, and took the pill and the water in each hand.

This was Wolfgang's second straight day on blockers. They'd let him take a break, once, which only resulted in Capheus and Lito's little fit. With the added threat of Lila, everyone agreed it best for him to be on blockers 24 hours a day, at least until a plan was set.

It had only been two days since Wolfgang had woken up. Two wildly uneventful days. The bright spot had been right before he'd taken his third round of blockers, as he lifted the pill to his mouth, when Kala grabbed his wrist.

When he'd first woken up, he was too bloody and disoriented. When he'd first been cleaned, he was too rattled by Lila. Since then he'd been on blockers. He didn't realize that he had never kissed her, in person, off blockers, until she pulled his face roughly to hers right then. (He'd dropped his pill.)

Yes, that had been a bright spot. Not just of the last dreary days. When all of this had settled, and she inevitably left him for her husband in Mumbai, he knew he would think of that kiss every morning and night.

Meanwhile, Will had been on and off blockers as time ticked by. He'd wanted to check on Whispers, to see what he was up to, but he couldn't make a connection. Either Whispers was unconscious, or, more likely, he'd had the same idea and was blocking them out, too.

Wolfgang sighed while he held his cup aloft. He and Will gave a silent toast, and took their medicine. The effects were too fast, he could almost see colors wash out, could almost hear voices mute.

He sighed and looked to Nomi sitting at the table by the window, clacking away at her laptop. Wolfgang cleared his throat. "Any word on Felix?"

She turned her chair to face him. "I'm working on it. He's laying low, I'm only catching bits and pieces of him. Not enough to know for sure where he is."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, I've been monitoring his credit card. Credit _cards,_ plural _._  He's usually a big spender, as you know, but he's been almost nowhere. He's bought cigarettes and some snacks, but always at different stores in different neighborhoods."

Wolfgang smirked. "He's a good thief. Good thieves always assume that someone is watching their credit cards."

"Well, that doesn't help me," Nomi huffed. "Do you have any idea at all of where he might be?"

 

* * *

 

Felix had been feeling odd all day. He had a pricking at the back of his neck, like something was terribly wrong. He'd been trying to ignore it, tell himself that all the business with the club and Fuchs was getting him antsy, that's all. To no avail; Felix knew why he was off.

He'd gotten a strange phone call this morning, from Wolfgang. He hadn't sounded like himself.

He'd sounded happy.

"I'm going away," he said. "I'm leaving Berlin, I'm not sure when I'll be back."

Felix, walking down the street, abruptly stopped. "What? When?"

"Today. Right now." He sounded downright giddy.

"Wolfie, not long ago you weren't sure about this plan, now you're going alone?" Felix was hurt, if he was being honest. The India Plan had been a year-long discussion, after all. He and Wolfgang were supposed to be inseparable.

Wolfgang swallowed. "No, Felix," he said, "It's not India."

"Then what the fuck is it?"

A pause on the other end of the call. "I'm going to Paris."

"Paris!" What business did Wolfgang have in Paris? Why so sudden, why alone? Was this an escape plan? Was he trying to take care of business he deemed too dangerous for Felix to know about? Felix asked him all of this without stopping for a breath.

He could almost hear Wolfgang shake his head. "I can't tell you. But everything is fine. I'll be back eventually, don't worry."

"If you say so. Call me when you get there, alright?" He hung up, thoroughly unconvinced. Since that call, he'd been on edge. Something was very very wrong, he could feel it.

Finally, Felix put down the key duplicate he was making for an old woman in Friedenau. He cursed as he flipped the sign on the door from 'Open' to 'Closed'. This was stupid. It was Wolfgang, and if Wolfgang was always one thing, it was in control. Felix hadn't had to worry about him being able to take care of himself since they were children, why would he start again now?

Still, he went to Wolfgang's apartment to put his conscience at ease. He had his own key, but didn't need it. Felix was surprised- Wolfgang always locked his door. This wasn't right. Felix pushed it open, tiptoed inside. There was no one to be seen, not a dust mite out of place. On the bed in Wolfgang's room was a short pile of folded clothes and an open duffle bag.

So he hadn't left yet. Felix supposed that could explain the unlocked door. "Wolfie?" he called out. "It's just me... your abandoned Sherpa. Where are you?" The bedroom had a familiar smell, but not one he associated with this place. He recognized it somehow.

Wolfgang wasn't in the bathroom either. The place was entirely empty.

He called Wolfgang's phone again, but was met with a sharp whining noise instead of a line ringing. Felix could feel his chest start to constrict. He stumbled back to the bedroom, and the identity of the foreign smell hit him like a truck. Bleach. Lots and lots of bleach.

Wolfgang was a neat person, but he didn't bleach. On the rare occasion that he used the stuff, it wasn't to make his floors gleam.

No. When Wolfgang made bloody messes- and he did, often- he didn't usually even have the common courtesy to clean up after himself. His M.O. was more to leave the bodies where they were to rot, and hope the whole ordeal blows over. If he'd made that kind of mess in here, Felix would be choking on a much different smell. Wolfgang would never willingly start a fight in his own apartment, either. Someone had come to him. If Wolfgang had beaten that someone, he and Felix would be disposing of the bodies right now. But what if Wolfgang had lost, (Felix shuddered at the thought) if he'd been the one who needed cleaning up...?

Felix had a few suspects in mind already as he sprinted down the sidewalk.

 

  
He was out of the elevator before the doors had fully slid open. He could hear Fuchs talking animatedly to someone in his lavish sitting room. Felix, suddenly made of stone or steel or something much stronger than himself, stormed right up to Fuchs. He heaved him up by the collar from where he'd sitting on the sofa, his scotch tumbling and spilling across the floor. "Where is he?" Felix demanded.

He was acutely aware that the two other men in the room had leveled their guns at his head. Fuchs looked confused, like he was working out a complicated puzzle. Then, he smiled. "Felix. It's been a while. Boys, no need," he addressed the men, who immediately holstered their weapons, "Felix is a dear friend."

Felix repeated himself. "Where is he?"

"Who?"

"Wolfgang."

At that, Fuchs' eyes narrowed, and his casual expression morphed, until Felix could swear he was staring a young Sergei Bogdanow in the face. "You know this business, Felix. I was disappointed when you gave up the club." He wrenched himself out of the smaller man's grip, straightened his expensive looking shirt. "That should have been my first hint, really. Looking back on it, it made me think you must have been in on it. But if you were, then bursting in here, now, would be the absolute worst decision you could possibly make... You really had no idea, did you?"

Felix's power had run out. He stood, weak, dumbfounded, and completely surrounded. "No idea of what?" he was terrified to hear the answer.

"Wolfgang was going to betray me. I know this for a fact." When he saw Felix shaking his head incredulously, he went on. "He was a liability to this organization. I will not give up everything I have built to a locksmith with a lucky bloodline, you understand."

 _Don't say it_ , Felix thought. _If you say it, I'm going to collapse on your floor and get vomit in the puddle of scotch_.

"Lila took him out this afternoon."

Wolfgang had always assumed that he'd die first. Felix had always assumed they'd die together. Which was worse?

This was. This was worse, a thousand times worse. How dare Wolfgang die without him. Even though Felix had expected Fuchs to say it, he still found himself whispering, "What?"

"He was conspiring against me," Fuchs sounded as if he were speaking down to a child, "and I had no other choice. I liked Wolfgang, you know I did. It was not easy for me."

Felix stumbled backwards, but refused to fall. He found his way back to the elevator, the last thing he heard before the doors closing was Fuchs ordering his men not to follow him. "He's no threat. Look at him."

He didn't know how to find Lila- he didn't know her phone number, her address, her fucking S-Bahn stop. She was in the wind. But she worked for Fuchs. She was bound to show up here eventually.

Felix's next few days were spent exactly the same way. He would go to the corner on the end of the block where Fuchs lived, and he'd wait. If Fuchs knew he was there, he didn't do anything about it, so Felix waited and waited. He'd stand with the gun weighing him down, fully loaded with the safety off. When Lila didn't show up, he retreated home to sleep and get ready to start again tomorrow.

More often than not, though, he didn't sleep. He had a constant pain in his chest, a crushing, sunken feeling that never lessened. All he wanted, all he wanted in the world was for that feeling to go away. He wanted to tear it out with his fists, claw through layers of skin and bone and root out the infection.

_Lila took him out this afternoon._

Every time he thought it, the cavity expanded an inch, two inches, three. His brother. The only person that had ever truly mattered, was gone. And Felix was going to get revenge if it was the last thing he did. Hopefully, it would be- they were always supposed to die together.

It was his fifth day of lurking around Fuchs' corner when he saw her. She was about to cross the street, and come straight to him. He wrapped his fingers around his gun, waited for her to get close enough to get a shot. The street was mostly unpopulated this early in the morning, thankfully, save for a few stragglers. Felix didn't care much if they called the police after he killed her in the middle of the crosswalk. It would have been worth it.

She was crossing the street now. Felix flattened his back against the building behind him. Lila was smoking a cigarette, not noticing him. He drew the gun, held it at his side.

She had reached the curb, and he was about to lift his arm when she spotted him. Before Felix could think, he was laying flat on the sidewalk, with the barrel of his own gun pressing into his forehead. "Who are you?" Lila spat. Felix gritted his teeth.

Realization dawned on her. "Oh. You're Wolfgang's friend, no?" She looked side to side, to make sure no one saw her. "Come." She hauled him up, and led him down the street by prodding the gun to his back. "Stupid boy. You want revenge? You can always just ask."

She dragged him to the feet of Sebastian Fuchs, explained his pathetically failed attempt. Fuchs approached him. "Felix," he tutted, "I'm disappointed. I thought we had reached an agreement."

"If you're going to kill me, can you spare the dramatics? Just do it, whatever," Felix figured if he was about to die, he was going to do it with a smile. "I'm not going to beg."

"Killing is not as easy as your friend used to make it seem, Felix. Killing is expensive. I have to pay the disposal crew, clear out the space so they can do their work. This city is running out of space to bury bodies under bridges.

"I see no need to kill you." He nodded at two bodyguards looming behind Felix's back. "But I hope I don't ever have to see you again. If I do, I may change my mind."

Felix was suddenly thrown forward by a blow to the back of his head. He watched Fuchs exit, leaving the two men to beat Felix however they wanted. Lila lingered, observed their work with amusement. Finally, she turned to follow. Over her shoulder she called, "If only you'd known what he was getting up to."

 

 

He'd limped home, spitting blood into the street every few steps. The gun was gone, in Lila's possession. Wolfgang's gun.

Felix ignored the stares he was given by everyone who passed him. He didn't know how long he'd been there, but the streets were much busier now. A few kind women stopped him, and offered to get him help. He politely refused.

Since that day, Felix had barely left his new hideout. At first, he hadn't understood why he'd been spared not once, but twice. But he knew now: he was weak, he was no one to fear. To them, he was Wolfgang's sidekick, and without Wolfgang, he was directionless and posed no threat.

They'd see about that.

He had a few broken ribs, and had lost two teeth. Nothing he couldn't handle. (And they were back teeth. Who cares.)

He needed a better plan, one less stupid and obvious than his last. He'd concocted that out of blind grief and hatred. But if Wolfgang were here, he'd think of something much stealthier, much cleverer.

Felix abandoned his apartment for a shitty hotel, signed under the name 'Thulsa Doom'. He still had a bit of money stashed away, enough to keep him here for a while. He'd stayed at this place once before, when he was just a kid. Wolfgang had snuck out of his house one night while his parents fought. Felix had seen his fresh bruises, knew his unwillingness to talk about them. So instead, Felix stole money from his dad's wallet and they stayed here for a night. It was the first time he stole solely to cheer Wolfgang up. It wasn't the last. Felix was grounded for a month, but never forgot how they'd jumped on the beds until the downstairs neighbor slammed on the floor. He didn't know why he was here now. Maybe to punish himself.

The wall of his room currently looked like the wall of a detective in a movie who'd gotten in too deep. If he walked into someone else's place that looked like this, he'd haul ass the other way immediately. Pictures, maps, scrawled out plans on sticky notes, napkins and spare bits of paper he'd found lying around, were all tacked to the wall and connected by red yarn. He stayed up most nights to formulate his attack, and to ignore the hole in his heart. (The last thing Wolfgang had said to him had been _I'll be back eventually, don't worry_. The irony of that made Felix want to scream.)

Off to the side of his mosaic of conspiracy was a smaller, more sparse board, titled:

**PARIS?**

It mostly consisted of theories of why Wolfgang was headed to Paris, alone, and why he'd sounded so damn giddy on that last call. Admittedly, Felix had only made this board to make himself feel better. There was nothing to know. Wolfgang was dead, it didn't matter where he was planning on going if he'd never gotten there.

Felix had fallen asleep in his clothes, spread-eagled on his bed after a long night of calculating times when he could catch Lila off guard. His rough plan currently involved a train stop, a hidden blade, and a parrot. It wasn't great.

The hotel phone rang, snapping him awake. He let it ring. He didn't need any new towels or anything, he was busy. It rang again. Felix ignored the phone two more times before finally yanking it up to his ear. "What the fuck do you want! I'm fucking sleeping!"

"Felix?"

That wasn't. It wasn't. It couldn't be. He was dreaming, he was having a nightmare, he was hallucinating, someone had slipped something into his food, this wasn't happening.

"Who- who is this?"

"It's Wolfgang."

Felix stood slowly, careful not to let his knees buckle. "No, it isn't."

"Yes. I know what they told you. It isn't true, none of it. I'm in London, I need you to come here. You're not safe in Berlin." Whoever it really was on the other end of the call, they sounded weak.

"I don't know what you're playing at, but it isn't going to work. I'm not walking into a trap, fucker." He hung up the call.

It rang again.

Was this some sort of cruel prank? If it was, it wasn't funny. But he didn't have any friends left to pull a joke on him. So then it had to be a trap. Fuchs had decided against risking letting him live, and had someone... pretend to be Wolfgang? Send him to London? That didn't make any sense, either.

It rang again.

Felix answered, more slowly this time. "Hello?"

"Felix. It really is me. I'm alive. I'm in London. You need to get here, before they decide letting you go was a mistake."

"How do you know about that? Who are you?"

The stranger sighed, sounding just like-

"Wolfgang. I swear. I'll explain everything, just go to the airport, there are tickets in your name on the next flight to Heathrow... are you still there?"

"Prove it. Say something only he'd know." Felix hated this phone call, he really did.

"Fine. Fine. You'd never admit it sober, but you miss Fatima from Schmitten. You told me so, the night Volker showed up. Then you told him you didn't want his pussy."

There was a long, long silence. He heard other voices muttering in the background, but couldn't make out any of it. The man finally asked, "Felix?"

"Wolfgang?"

"Yes, it's me, fuck. You have to go, right now. I promise you'll get an explanation as soon as you get here. When the plane lands, wait there." Wolfgang was smirking, Felix just knew. "Okay," he said, "Alright. I'm going."

He heard a click as Wolfgang hung up the phone. Felix stood with the receiver glued to his face. He looked to the wall, his patchwork quilt of insanity. His revenge plan. Without telling his body to move, he ran and started tearing it all down. He dragged his fingers up and down, watching yarn and papers and thumbtacks fly to the floor. Soon, it all lay in a heap at his feet.

Felix balled up and threw all his clothes back in his travel bag. Normally, he'd fold them all carefully, but neatness was the furthest thing from his mind. He didn't even care if the cleaning woman came in later to find papers strewn about bearing the words "POISON THE CUNT".

He abandoned his plan. It wasn't until he was in the taxi on the way to the airport that he noticed the hole in his chest had been filled.

 

 

Felix waited anxiously in the lobby, perched on the edge of a baggage claim carousel. His leg bounced frantically of its own volition. He didn't know what he was waiting for. He'd spent the whole flight thinking of ways Wolfgang could simultaneously escape with his life and make the person who supposedly killed him think him dead. None of his ideas were comprehensible to even himself.

He waited twenty more minutes before he saw someone he didn't recognize bounding straight towards him. The man was a lot bigger than Felix, almost the size of the ridiculous grin on his own face. "Felix!" he called. Felix couldn't place his accent.

Next thing he knew, he was being swept into a bone crushing hug. "Welcome! It is so good to finally meet you. I am Capheus." His German was perfect, Felix noted as the man held out a huge hand to shake. "Yeah.... who?" Felix asked.

"Wolfgang sent me to get you. He said you would not believe me. He told me to tell you that 'two stood against many'. Come on, everyone is waiting." Capheus scooped up Felix's bag and headed to the entrance. Felix ran to catch up. "Everyone? Where's Wolfgang?"

He threw Felix's bag in the back of a small red car. "Get in, quickly. We don't know if there are people watching for us."

Felix had no reason to trust him. Yet- 'two stood against many.' That had to be Wolfgang. Felix got into the passenger seat, hoping he wasn't making a horrible mistake. "How do you know me?" he asked Capheus as they pulled away from the airport. For as gentle an impression as he made, Wolfgang's strange friend was a fucking speed demon.

"Ah. I'll explain. This may sound crazy. But you have to believe it."

The car ride proceeded to be the most ridiculous of Felix's life. The tale Capheus spun was riveting, full of explosions and fist fights and hot psychic sex. But it wasn't true. Felix told him so, and asked for the real story. He figured he deserved that.

Capheus seemed unsurprised that Felix didn't believe in "sensates" or "clusters" or the evil villain with the perfectly evil name. "Felix, it is all true. Did you notice Wolfgang acting strange over the last year or so? Talking to himself? Speaking in languages you didn't know he knew? Doing things that he does not know how to do?"

_Wolfgang?_

He'd heard about the bomb at Sergei's house.

_What the hell language was that?_

He'd heard how Steiner died thinking Felix had blown the Indian smuggler.

_Wolfgang!_

Even though Wolfgang could never lie to his cousin, not even when they were boys.

_What the fuck are you on? And where can I get some?_

If this was true, and he had a chemist and an actor rattling around in his brain, then all this... it added up.

"Here we are," Capheus said as he parked the car next to a curb. Felix noticed then the wires dangling out next to Capheus' left knee. This was a stolen car. Maybe Wolfgang was friends with this guy, after all.

Capheus tossed Felix's bag back to him. "We can't park in front of the place, you know. It's six blocks that way." He pointed in front of them.

They walked quietly for a block or two, before Felix bombarded Capheus with a new set of questions. "Why did they tell me he was dead? Where has he been?"

Capheus' face turned solemn. "Ah. Right. Lila is like us. She turned him in to BPO. They tortured him, until we rescued him a few days ago."

Felix suddenly remembered what Lila told him before she left him to be pounded to a pulp. _If only you'd known what he was getting up to._

Capheus led him into a shitty apartment building, down a shitty hallway, to face a shitty door. "This is it."

He knocked twice, paused, and knocked again. The door immediately flung open. On the other side was probably the most attractive man Felix had ever seen. He looked like a doll his half-sister used to play with. The kind of doll he'd take into his room and burn up with matches. "Felix!" the man cried. He hugged him as tightly as Capheus had, if not tighter. "Did he tell you about us?"

Felix nodded dumbly. The man put a hand to his chest. "I'm Lito."

"The movie star, right." Lito looked thrilled to be recognized. He stepped aside to let Felix into the room. All eyes were on him. He could pick out a few from Capheus' descriptions. The girl with white hair was a DJ who'd lost her child. The tall blonde was the hacker, which meant the girl on her right was her fiancé. A wooden partition separated him from the rest of the room. He could hardly see through the slats, but he could make out, sitting on the bed, the figure of his dead best friend.

Wolfgang grinned at him as he approached. Some part of Felix hadn't believed he was alive, even after talking to him, even after hearing Capheus explain it all. But here he was. There was only one thing Felix could think to say.

"You look like shit."

"So do you."

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well that was......... certainly a lot of felix. welcome him to the team, why dont you, and comment :)


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm alive !

Of all the various states of fucked up Felix had expected Wolfgang to be in when he found him, he had to admit that this was one of the milder. He had prepared himself for worse- Wolfgang appeared to have all his limbs, fingers, toes, and teeth, as well as most of his skin, firmly where it was supposed to be. Felix's expectations had been exceeded measurably.

Still, he breathed too heavily, with a tremor. His face was gaunt and yellow, so he'd either lost a lot of blood or a lot of weight. Or both. He was hunched over, looking up at Felix and waiting to gauge a reaction. Felix didn't know _what_ he was thinking, exactly. He stayed silent, the whole room waiting with baited breath for him to say anything else. He was keenly aware of everyone's gaze- everyone, it seemed, but a woman who was seated next to Wolfgang, on the ground. She searched back and forth between them furtively.

Felix cleared his throat. He had so many questions, flying and jumbling together in his mouth too fast to land on one. Why didn't you tell me? How can any of this be real? Who are these people? How are you positive you can trust them?

Instead, all that came out was:

_"What?"_

Wolfgang laughed, which turned to a painful sounding cough. The woman next to him jumped up to her knees, and put her hands at his sides, holding him steady. Felix remembered Capheus telling him in the car about their pharmacist. This must be her.

Felix took a heavy step forward, but Wolfgang held up a hand for him to stop. That meant "I'm fine." Felix had seen the exact same gesture enough times after barfights and alleyway passouts to know that.

"What did he tell you?" Wolfgang asked. The rest of them leaned in, slightly. Save for the pharmacist woman, who was again busy with her patient. Felix frowned. "Not much. Just that you're a different species of human being hunted by a massive corporation. And that you're not dead. Not sure which was more surprising, honestly."

His friend looked sullen. Not normal Wolfgang sullen, but genuinely grief-stricken. Felix always could decipher those subtleties. They were in his eyes. "Wolfie," he went on, "everyone said... I mean _everyone_.... You were dead. Thrown in a river or- or some shit like that. I was out of my mind, man. You can't do that to me. I mean, it's me, you fucking-" Felix could feel all his frustration, all his grief bubble and rise up inside of him like a steam engine ready to blow its whistle. "You call me out of nowhere, with rainbows flying out of your asshole, giggling about an escape plan I'm not invited to, and then you die. And you do that without me, too. I had to find out from Sebastian Fuchs, you should know that. That he breathed it in my face like your death was a puff of cigar smoke. And Wolfie- that's fine. Die all you want, leave me alone if you have to. Except you didn't die, did you, Wolfgang? Because you don't ever fucking do what normal people fucking do! Like die!"

Felix had never been intimidating when he yelled. He sort of bounced onto his toes awkwardly, his voice mounting in pitch. But he could see it affecting Wolfgang as clearly as he could hear the voice in his head, telling him not to let up.

"I've spent the last week boxed up in a hotel room, trying to plan a way to kill Lila- She killed you, by the way, did you know that? She's real excited to spread that around, she's fucking proud- only to find out you didn't even die, and you're hanging out in London with your psychic fuckbuddies! A text would have been nice, Wolfie, or a fucking message in a bottle, or a smoke signal, or something- something other than me, thinking I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life! Christ. You asshole."

He stumbled backwards, exhaling. "Sorry." He was slightly aware of a tear trying to escape his eye. He brushed it away before it could fall. "Sorry, Wolfie, I just- you don't know what that's like."

Wolfgang hadn't budged an inch, had been staring, steadfast and still as he spoke. His expression was one of sorrow, and something else entirely unreadable. "Yes," he finally said, "I do."

The scars on Felix's chest prickled at the memory.

"Oh," Felix said dumbly.

Wolfgang squeezed his eyes shut, and pushed himself upright. The woman next to him stood as if to help him, but he waved her off. With great concentration and more than a little effort, he stood. The others all watched him apprehensively, ready to jump in if he were to topple.

But he didn't. Instead, he took a few slow steps towards Felix, stopping less than a foot in front of him. "Sorry, Felix. For everything."

Felix gulped. "Don't die for real, Wolfie. Berlin sucks without you."

He didn't get to see Wolfgang laugh, because he'd been pulled in for a bone crushing hug. When they pulled apart, Felix noticed tears in the eyes of one of the women and two of the men.

"Well," he huffed, "this is heavy."

 

* * *

 

 

The Cannibal gazed wistfully out the window of his office, facing away from the woman sitting in the chair opposite his desk. "This is a beautiful city," he breathed. "Eternally gray, yet everything glimmers. Every last thing. Astounding how that works. It's my favorite place in the world, England. Such a bloody, abhorrent past it has. Nevertheless, we view it as the epitome of grace and poise. Or, in America we do. And we are among those that bled. As if we've forgotten."

He turned sharply to Lila. "You don't know where I have been. Why the organization is chaotic beyond recognition. Do you?" At her blank eyes, he said, "Ah. Of course not."

"It is because of you." He hissed the words. Lila felt a chill run up her spine. "But we will not hold that against you. That is, if this information you claim to have is sound."

Lila straightened in her seat, wished she wasn't on blockers so someone could be here with her. "It is. I know how many are in that cluster."

"Oh?"

"Eleven."

 

* * *

 

 

Rajan paced the carpeted floor of his office, trying to ignore the prick of blood at this tip of his index finger where he'd ripped the nail. His anxiety was taking physical form now, apparently.

He inhaled deeply, and finally faced the two men. "Are you ready now, Mr. Rasal?" the larger one asked cautiously.

Rajan nodded. The two had been waiting to speak for a few minutes, but Rajan hadn't been ready to hear it. Still he had to know.

The other, smaller detective cleared his throat. "As you know, your wife made a last minute exchange of airline tickets, from Paris to London. She paid for this out of pocket, in cash. We talked to the clerk. Apparently she was in quite a panic." He procured from the folder he was holding a statement from the airline employee. "She recalled Mrs. Rasal to be a 'scared, trembling thing'," he said it so casually. Rajan wanted to tear his hair out.

"We have been in contact with Heathrow. Your wife had a sort of..." he struggled to find the words.

His partner chipped in. "...Fit, sir. The airport says it was most likely a seizure- she collapsed to the ground, shaking. She bled through the nose, but refused medical attention. She left in a cab. To where, we do not know."

Rajan had gripped onto the lip of his desk for support. A fit. He tried to picture Kala in a city she didn't know, out of control of her own body, her own mind. She hated being out of control. She must be so scared, he thought. My Kala.

"You do not know," Rajan repeated softly. "What kind of detectives are you, then? If you cannot find one lone woman?"

The detectives remained stony, not budging an inch. "How dare you treat this as a normal case...?" Rajan warned. "This will be your primary priority. Until you find my wife, you will eat, sleep, and drink this case. If you do not find her, you will go to your graves still searching for her. If you find her and she-" he couldn't say it- "if she's gone, you will be ruined. I am a kind man. And a powerful one. If you do not find my wife, the remnants of your failure will not be forgotten by this city. Or my father." Unspoken was the implied final sentence.

Or the Prime Minister.

The men nodded, agreed profusely, and hurried out the door the moment they were excused. 

Rajan looked wearily down at the business card sitting in front of his computer. Its sharp edges dull from him turning it over in his hands from the day it was handed to him, he still had yet to call the number typed neatly across it. But he was desperate. He was listless. She was gone.

Rajan dialed the number. "Hello?"

A male voice, British, answered, "Mr. Rasal, I've been waiting for your call. It's nice to finally speak with you. My name is Michael Sabbith, I'm with the Biologic Preservation Organization. We are interested in doing experimental research side by side with Rasal Pharmaceuticals, into the human genome. Is this is a project you would be willing to stand by?" The man sounded desperate, like the sudden support of Rajan's company was all he needed to live another day. 

Rajan blinked. "I don't understand- I was given this number in an envelope addressed to my wife. It was unmarked, how do you know-"

"Your wife, yes. A pity. We wish to find her as much as you do. She has quite a mind," Sabbith said comfortingly.

Rajan shifted his weight foot to foot. "Yes, she does."

"Her mind is integral to the sort of work we wish to do. Together, we can find her and get that priceless brain on our project. This research could affect the entire human race, you understand. Before you ask what the subject is precisely, you must understand that it's highly classified. We would need your pledge of partnership before we go any further." He paused. "Mr. Rasal. Do not take this the wrong way. But you will not find her without us."

Rajan weighed his options. The card had a London address on it. If nothing else, he could expense his search as a business trip. "I agree. Rasal Pharmaceuticals will help your project. I will need to come to London right away."

"Oh, wonderful! She is here, you should know."

Sabbith hung up, leaving Rajan stunned, alone in his office. He froze for just a moment before ordering a private plane to Heathrow. No time to lose.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i promise promise promise there won't be a 4 month wait next time. pinky promise.

**Author's Note:**

> My first Sense8 fic, to get me through these troubled times. (Don't forget- sign the petition, tweet #BringBackSense8, call Netflix, fill the suggestion box, send an email, a flip flop, something to save this beautiful show)


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